How to use this Page

Let's see if this works...

When last heard from I was in Wales, for the Doctor Who table read. And then I was off the world picking plums.

I'm still off the edge of the world right now. I was exhausted when I got here -- more exhausted than even I knew, I think. Too much travel, too much nothing ever quite stopping, too many meals on the road. I felt old and creaky and tired.

I spent my first week catching up on my sleep, eating sensible meals that I made myself, mostly veggies and fruits and fresh-caught fish (courtesy of the neighbours, who would walk up the hill and tap on the window, and give me fresh-caught mackerel and such. I gave them bags of plums). I did a lot of walking. Then I got a bicycle, and started going on daily bike rides, two miles to start with, which turned into six to ten miles each day as soon as I started to get into it. I'd take photos of things I'd pass while bike-riding using my little Nexus 1 phone camera and then knit them together with a stitcher program called Hugin.

During the first of the ten mile bike rides, I realised I knew what the next big fictional prose story I wanted to tell is. And that I know the story, or enough of it, but not who tells it, who sees it, how it's told. It may have to go back and forth with different people telling different chapters, and bits in diaries and such. It's tremendously reassuring when that happens - an idea turns up and you know it's big and it has legs and nobody's told that story before. And that if you just get all the pieces into position before you start, the plot will take care of itself. Getting the pieces into place is going to be the hard bit. Add a Comment