I wasn’t strictly following the rules (but they’re only really guidelines, and optional at that) in that I wasn’t starting a new novel this time. I was carrying on the same one that I started last year, and I hadn’t written many more in the interim. I managed just under 15,000 words this year, which is slightly less then last time (and less than a tenth of my erstwhile OU Creative Writing classmate Karl’s crazy figure)

It has, however, given me a new kickstart, and I intend to carry the momentum onwards, but at a more manageable rate. My novel (working title Accidental Upgrade) currently stands at around 36,000 words. I’ve set myself a target of 80,000 by the end of February. That is more like the length of a modern novel, and achievable at a rate of around 475 words a day, according to Scrivener.

That’s much more feasible for me than Nano’s 1667. Though I’m just realising that I said essentially the same thing last year, and it obviously didn’t work. Still, I feel more confident this time. I wrote around 600 words today, and I’ve got Scrivener to help me keep on track.

Good enough advice, in general. But there are always counterexamples.

This morning on the way to work I read a story on Tor’s website, which is almost entirely telling; and almost entirely wonderful.

‘Six Months, Three Days’, by Charlie Jane Anders. Highly recommended.

Some nice thoughts on what my friends in Edinburgh get up to with their spoken-word performances and chapbook publishing.

I really must get up for one of their performances.

Oh well. The plan now is not to stop, because then I’d most likely never finish it. Instead, I’m going to carry on, with a much reduced target of, say, 500 words per day, and see where that takes me.

Edited to say: That’s 15,000, of course, not the meaningless “15,00”.

1. We’ll be able to buy Mitch Benn’s mighty ‘I’m Proud of the BBC’ in downloadable single format. So head off and do that now, and help it to chart. I’ll wait.

   Actually, it’s not yet midnight as I type, and I’ve just downloaded it.

2. NaNoWriMo is about to start. I’m having a go this year. Wish me luck.

   I last tried it in 2004, which is much longer ago than I thought. I sort of had a half-hearted poke at it last year, but soon stopped. I’m hoping that expressing my intention in public like this will help to keep me going.

   We’ll see, of course.

   I see that the approaching start has brought the NaNoWriMo site to its knees. Oh well. Hopefully they’ll get things back together.

If you can’t take the time and trouble to learn how to write a coherent sentence, then why on earth do you believe people should listen to what you have to say?

Oh, yes.

First Edition is a new magazine publishing new writing: fiction, poetry, and reviews. It’s just reached issue 4. That’s an important one to remember. Issue 4. That’s the one you should go and buy.

That’s the one that contains a poem by me.

Oh yes. I am a published poet, as of – well, just about today, really.

Available now from some good magazine shops, allegedly. But certainly from that there website.

Go on, check it out. You know you want to.

Crossing at Islington

We swarm
Fluourescent honeybees on wheels
Waiting
For electric flower’s red stamen
to turn green.

Some go too soon
Red flashes out its warning.
Angry metal birds roar down
And pick them off.

You could always follow me there, if you don’t already.

Also my OU course. Which, ironically or not, is on Creative Writing.

Incidentally, if brevity is the soul of wit, then Twitter ought to be hilarious.

It seems obvious to me that, if your navy personnel are captured by the forces of a foreign power, in peacetime, and accused of being in the foreign power’s waters, then what you should do is as follows: You say, “Oops, sorry. Didn’t mean to have them off station; didn’t think they were, actually, but if they were, we’re sorry.” Even, and let me make this quite clear, if you know perfectly well that they weren’t in the other power’s territory.

That, it seems to me, would be the diplomatic thing to do

So why did they not do that? My best guess is that they - the British government - were worried about losing face.

‘Losing face.’ It’s a strange thing for the government of what is still a fairly major world power to be worrying about, isn’t it? After all, it’s not as if making such a guarded admission and apology would actually have done Britain any harm, would it?

And it might have got the captured service people home a few days earlier - and without being humiliated on TV - you never know. Perhaps, even, the Iranian government would have apologised in their turn, and admitted that they might have made a mistake.

That last seems almost likely, given that they did appear to concede quite graciously in the end. But what do I know? I’m neither diplomat nor politician, and there might be some way in which doing what I suggested right from the start would have been political suicide. And obviously things will have been going on in the background of which we know nothing. But still…

And then they get home and tell their stories. I seem to be the only person in the country who thinks like this, but I see no reason why they shouldn’t be allowed to profit from doing so. Somebody is going to profit from the stories being told, so why shouldn’t it be the ones to whom they happened?

Sure, if it’s against the rules of the service, then that’s the deal they signed up for. But since the Ministry of Defence authorised it, then at the very least, I don’t see how you can blame the sailors.

I speak as someone who likes to write; so if I imagine myself into a situation like that, I know I would want to write my story once I had escaped. And if I could go on to sell it for professional publication, then you’re damn right I would want to do so. Why not?

The reported reactions of some of the families of service personnel who have died in Iraq is, to my mind, a red herring. There’s no direct comparison. As far as I know, there’s nothing to stop those families from writing, telling, or selling their own stories, or those of their lost ones. If they choose not to, that’s fine. But the two situations are quite different.

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