Miscellaneous

Hello. I gotta get this blog out quick before my mind catches up with me and the new novel takes over again. It is reluctant to share head space, thus the lack of ranting recently. It has taken over, gained control of me and the only reason I can write this blog is because I've distracted the novel by reading lots. That part of my brain is now thinking about The Grisha (Shadow and Bone - The Grisha Book 1 - Leigh Bardugo.) and I carved out a tiny chunk of space for the rants to breed. But I have to be quick because there's no telling how long The Grisha can hold my new novel at bay. After all, it is a horror. AHHHHHHHHH!

Spiders
Okay, so anyone else terrified of spiders? Yes, it's so obvious and I wish I could lay claim to be unaffected by the multi-legged monsters, but that would be a damn straight lie. Genuine terror is what I feel and all the reports about spiders under your toilet seats and house spiders taking over the world are not helping. Every time I check facebook there's a post about them, or a photograph of one someone found in their house, or a video of some guy poking a spiders web and out popping a monstrous beast.

This is not helpful to those who are genuinely scared. I cannot get through a day without some sort of pictoral evidence of their plan to attack. It seems that we may soon be overrun by overgrown house spiders. And people try to shirk off my irrational fear. I think more and more would agree that it's completely rational. And when they start to take over the world eating humans in the process, don't say I didn't warn you. They may catch and eat flies, but soon they'll be catching even bigger creatures for dinner. Watch out!

Ticket Spewing Machines 
Armed with a 40% voucher, we headed to the cinema last night. I always find it amusing that the self serve ticket machines have little to no manners. It really doesn't take much and with technology as it is today, surely the machines should be better at manners than the humans?

So you touch the button that says: pick up previously bought tickets. Then immediately it says: waiting for card to be inserted. Er, sorry, when did you ask for my card to be inserted? So you reluctantly insert your card and it obtains the details, blah, blah, blah, and then it says: awaiting removal of your card. Just ask. Just say: please remove your card. It's not difficult to be polite about this. And then as a final lack of manners, it spews out the tickets so fast that they always fall to the floor, because the little thing that's meant to catch them has even less courtesy than the machine itself. Come on Odeon. Sort it out. More courteous machines please.

Buses
I know I complain about the buses a lot, but when a supposed 21 minute journey takes 40 minutes and you are still no where near the destination, and you have to jump off and take the tube, which costs a heck of a lot more, when you could have just taken the tube in the first place, but were trying to take the cheaper option, it sort of pisses you off a little. I wouldn't mind if I was just going somewhere by myself, but I was picking up a little boy from school. And it was the first time I had picked him up since the start back, I could hardly be late. That would look great.

So, when I went to pick him up yesterday, I set off about fifteen minutes earlier than that which gave me a whole hour and fifteen minutes to get there. Of course I arrived half and hour early. Cannot win. Law of the sod.

Novel 
I mentioned the novel taking over. It really has. I am desperate to get it all out there before our holiday in a couple of weeks. It's touch and go, but I might make it. Yesterday I passed through the milestone of 50k words and I should hopefully be done by 70k, fingers crossed. It definitely isn't a long, long one, like my other novels.

I'm so absorbed though, that the characters emotions are actually affecting mine. It's bizarre. The other day I was sort of annoyed and upset and felt complete injustice, but it wasn't me that had had a massive argument with my mum, essentially being told that I couldn't be trusted to look after my brothers and sisters. It wasn't me that wasn't trusted in my own house. It wasn't me that was deemed slightly crazy. But I was still feeling all that. Well, I guess I really am living, breathing and feeling my characters. It makes them so real. They live through me and I through them. Okay, so maybe I am slightly crazy.........

Paper scraps
The notes for this blog were written on the back of the Odeon receipt from last night, as I stupidly walked out without my miscellaneous-anything-goes-notebook. Instead I'd left the house with only my novel-specific-notebook, a mistake I won't be making again, though it did transport me back to Uni when I used to write song lyrics on envelopes and train tickets and anything I could get my hands on. The joy of being a writer. Receipts and paper scraps are so much more than paper to be recycled, they can be the formation of worlds, the creation of characters, or a list of things to blog about.

Whoop! I managed to knock out a quick blog. It won't be long before The Grisha admit defeat and the novel punches through the ranks. Thank you for reading. More when I can. But keep this between me and you, I wouldn't like them to figure out our plan.........

Shhhhhhh........

Rants