The Finishing Line. Or Paragraph. Or Even The Finishing Eight Chapters.

Right, here goes nothing. About 125 pages of nothing, to be exact. The actual finishing date for nanowrimo is tomorrow,at midnight in your local time zone. But because tomorrow night,I'll be doing my first bit of stand up in about a year for a charity gig,I'm going to have a damn good go at trying to finish the nano book tonight. This, however, might be a bit of a push,since there's still about 15,000 words left to make the word count.

You can tell that it's not a prospect I'm looking forward to, because I'm procrastinating by doing this blog. Writers are an idiotic lot sometimes. Very few other groups of people consider that the best way to avoid writing is to do some completely different writing.

What's odd is that it still feels like a short story, despite the fact that its currently running at 35,000 words. I mean, let's not kid ourselves here: it's very much a hack job, a situation that ain't gonna change when I cough out the last 15 thousand words in - I hope - less than seven hours. Nobody's going to produce anything of real quality in that night, not even if their name is Hemingway. But, frankly, that's not important - getting down the main body is, and I can come back in January to the carcass and pick over the bones. As terrible as this draft is - and it is terrible at the moment, it hasn't even got up to the level of first draft yet - I (even I, normally hyper self critical ) find bits of it readable. And here's the ... Encouraging/Depressing bit (delete as appropriate) ... This terrible, badly written, incomplete book, at least six drafts away from anything I wish to show to anyone. much less consider publication, is already better than some stuff I've seen uploaded to the kindle. This is something I very much need to keep in mind in the wee small hours of tonight.

Moran And More

Went to see Caitlin Moran this week, at the Old Market in Hove. She's just published her new book, and is doing the whole chat/Q & A/book signing tour thing.

I met her afterward - by which I mean I lined up with everyone else to get my book signed - when we chatted very briefly, and she said flattering things. I'm reasonably convinced that she has a whole list of well rehearsed flattering things to say to people at these sorts of events, but, hell, if she's going to put the spadework in to lie so sweetly, it would be impolite not to take her at face value.

She's a great talker, effortlessly charming and engaging, and has the rare raconteur's skill of managing to spin out what could be a reasonably tissue thin story about a chance encounter on a train into a much more  more  of a brilliant anecdote. In person, she's what you hope every columnist will be in real life: someone you can just prop a bar with for a few hours, line up the G&Ts, and just natter with into the small hours. As opposed to the rest of us, who manage to pummel potentially good anecdotes into over-long bits of dirge. Which I hope to demonstrate daily, with this blog, here.

But despite the fact that Caitlin Moran is quite garrulous, she made a couple of allusions to being quite shy. This was met with some derision by her interviewer, and indeed, those members of the audience who had already read How To Be A Woman, that suggested people didn't quite believe that shyness was something that could be always listed in her top 10 of characteristics.  But to me, it made absolute sense. I think it makes sense to anyone who uses words as some kind of transaction in their career. Obviously, most of us talk from day to day in our lives, but equally obviously, for some of us, words are our currency, whether that be as a writer, an actor, or any kind of public speaker. I think it's entirely possible - and indeed, logical - for someone who spends so much of their lives performing on stage to not want to be even looked at when they're off it. Even if you're appearing behind a microphone 'as yourself', it's not really an accurate version of yourself. At least when everyone's paid nine quid to see you, and is sitting in neatly ordered rows, you know that that's a, if not falsified, then certainly rarified atmosphere. You have an 'in' - these people, you know, are here to see you. If you find yourself chatting at length at the local bar, then the chances are you'll suddenly find yourself panicking that everyone around you is simply waiting for you to shut the hell up. 

Someone who doesn't always want you to look at her when she's offstage, but is magnetic when on it, is Sarah Charsley, whose show, Three Kinds Of Me, ends tonight (and they told me I couldn't segue). It's actually sold out - the last seven tickets have gone in the past hour, as I'm writing this - and last night was extraordinary. The atmosphere in the studio at the New Venture Theatre was electric, and managed to indulge in all those cliches of a roller coaster of emotions - you'll laugh, you'll cry, etc, etc. If you manage to see it tonight, you're very lucky, at least as lucky as I have been to have been involved in the production. The mood in the bar afterward was buzzingly excited, with so many people really insistent that these shouldn't be the only performances of the show. Now, I'm fully aware that this runs the risk of tottering over into hyperbole, and that similar things are often said whenever there's a particularly good production going on, but I honestly think that there's truth in there them statements. We're beginning to think about reviving the production already, with at least the Brighton Fringe in our sights, so if your venue has a few spare performance spots, you know where to get in touch. 

(If you don't know where to get in touch - I mean here. Here is where you can get in touch. I was hoping that I didn't have to spell it out to you)