Wow - still reading after that naff, partly copied pun? Have you read the rest of the internet? Well whatever it is, thanks for reading. I'm not entirely sure how six months passed since the last entry. I just read that  - short story by Christmas huh? Jeez, well that didn't happen. What did happen was that I climbed on the old literary horse and was shrugged of like a..very unskilled, lightweight horseman. I wrote about 500 words and then convinced myself that it wasn't the right time to return, because I couldn't devote enough time to get a head of steam up. Thereby hangs a cautionary tale - if you let life get in the way, then it will. Every time. Learning some throwaway skill to make your work life seem a little safer and easier will outrank your need to become a literary genius every time.

Interesting what I wrote about Brad Reed Writes as well though. Because somehow I have moved from panicking about how ignorant I am about creative writing to being keen to throw in all these new tricks into my book. Which looks depressingly like another gammy phase to be endured where I pepper my prose with them indiscriminately before I finally work out how to use them in context. Also I've just had to look up mis en scene again, this proving that half of what I'm learning hasn't even stuck.

The plus point is that I have actually got writing again - finally. My short story isn't finished - but we're 5k words in - at the denoument - and I can already feel the value of the short story as the best way to learn even before I try and get some feedback on the thing, because they are so much easier to rewrite. This is starting to feel a bit more like a stage where I develop myself as a writer, rather than produce a enormous chunk of text, hurl it into the void, and never see it again.

We'll see how well that works out. But I will now set a reminder for 2 weeks, and let you know how it goes then. Or maybe 6 months. We'll see..