Have come to conclusion that I'm an enormously delicate flower of a person.  This is not a good thing to be in this world.  Outside the orcs are cutting down the trees and I can hear them (the trees) screaming in pain, all the leaf buds dying, all that life extinguished by an evil fucker's chainsaw.  I put on some pretty music and tried to write my not-very-good story but it's quite entertaining (to write, anyway).......only to have my computer tell me there was no more storage space.
Was it utterly nuts???? Brand new computer, with about one millimetre of blue used on the C drive.  Something to do with OneDrive, whatever the hell that is.  And do you think I could contact Microsoft???!!!  I was howling with frustration, blinded by tears, when finally I worked out I had to click on the "disabled" persons thing (I don't understand this - they only talk to disabled people, everyone else gets a crap email?)  Anyway, since my feet are in agony, my arthritis hurts, I have had terrible earache for two weeks and am thus partially deaf, I figured I was disabled enough.  Also, I'm a hypochondriac, have agoraphobia, claustrophobia, suffer from severe bouts of depression, and frightened of people, germs, dirt and taxes.....so I figure this makes me quite disabled too.
Or, at best, a crushed petal of a person, who cries at the most minor of life's challenges.
Anyway, totally fab Microsoft guy took remote access of my computer, got rid of stupid OneDrive which I don't need and I'm back in action.
A Very Big Writer's Tip:  if this happens and you think you're going to lose what you just wrote, copy and paste it as fast as possible into an email.  I did that and thank God I did because the last paragraph I had written vanished.  Easily retrievable from gmail.  Hoorah.
Think I'd better go and have lunch before I die of starvation.

Out the.  Out of the.  Out the.  Out of the.  Out of mind.  Out the mind.  Out the.  Out of the.  Mind.  Out of.  Going.  Out the.  Out of the.  Out of mind.  Out of the mind.  Going out the mind.  Going out of the mind.  Out the.  Out of the.  Mind.  Going.  Gone.
I finally got around to doing the corrections I needed to do on my new novel (the one I wrote last year......currently being ignored by several agents).  They weren't particularly major things, for example, I used the word "highway" instead of "motorway".  The former is not British, apparently.  Growing up in South Africa, my English is littered with what appear to be Americanisms.  Decades of living in the UK seem to have made no difference.  Once the idiom is grooved in, you're stuck with it.
One of my (very well educated, intelligent and sharp-eyed) beta readers spotted that I had left out the "of" in thousands of cases:  "out of the" instead of "out the."  Horrified at my bad English, I rushed off and changed them all.  But as I was changing them, I began to have serious doubts.  In many cases, it didn't scan properly.  It didn't sound right to my ear.  It seemed clumsy.  More importantly, it was contrary to the way I "think."  While I'm willing to Anglicize highway, "out of the" - in many cases - just seemed wrong.
So I asked a friend with decades of editing experience and he said he'd had the same problem when editing and had at first changed them all to "out of the", only to realise that it must be an Americanism.  THIS I can understand.  South African English (at least at the time that I grew up there) is full of Americanisms, the most obvious reason being that during the Equity ban, we got to hear no good English i.e. all BBC programmes were banned and those that did turn up on TV were dubbed into Afrikaans, which was excruciating.   
So today I changed all the instances of "out of the" back to "out the."  It was enough to drive anyone bonkers!  Obviously I still say "out of the blue" but I don't say "she looked out of the window" or "she walked out of the door".  I checked online to see what others make of this problem and one person insists you can't have anyone falling out of a tree or even out a tree - they fall OFF a tree.  I think all the people I know who have fallen out of trees would probably disagree with that!
In the end, I decided to go with consistency.  And fluidity.  And the familiar.  After all, it's not a work of high literature - other readers didn't notice the lack of "of" at all!!

Nothing is quite as daunting - for a writer - when you realise the story you're writing has failed.  What to do ... what to do ...  First I cried a lot, then just felt REALLY depressed.  Then my sore foot (that hasn't been sore for nearly two years) started hurting again and that made me even more depressed.
Then in the bath - by chance - I heard a quote by Douglas Adams on the radio.  Naturally, after a long and protracted Google search, I can't find the quote.  It had to do with writing.  It had to do, more specifically, with editing.  It made me realise that no matter how crap the story is that you are writing, it can be edited into something spectacular.  It emphasised the need to get something down on a page - ANYTHING down on a page - so that you can actually edit it.  
I live by this advice.  "You can't flesh out the skeleton unless you actually have a skeleton to flesh out" is my version of this.  But I have another piece of advice that has helped me over the years:  if a story grinds to a halt, it's because there's something wrong earlier on.
In the quote, Douglas Adams quite rightly pointed out that quite often you only work out what is going to happen in a story when you get there and that is what changes the earlier bits.  This is SO true:  I've had characters develop on the page which means, often, that earlier pages are just wrong as the characters are now "out of character" as it were.  Often elements of the story only reveal themselves when you're a long way down the road, thus changing things that went before.  Basically this boils down to your imagination only getting into gear once you really know the story and have written thousands of words, most of which you're now going to have to change. 
So I have a choice here:  to keep grinding on even though I know everything I'm writing is wrong and the ending can't actually happen because it hasn't been set up properly (or at all.)
Or I could just make a thousand notes and start editing now.
I know I've got a good story here.  It's a unique idea.  Original ideas are also worth pursuing.  I may just have failed to develop the idea properly.  Also, I find that I'm wandering off on tangents that stop any action from occurring.  This is what I wrote in my notes:
"This story is not going well.  It hasn't, er, evolved* the way I wanted it to.  Too much talking, explaining, flashbacking and almost no action at all.  You've been sidetracked by creating the universe and have forgotten the story, of which there is almost NOTHING."
I like the way I talk to myself crossly.
So I may take a break from this for a few days, get some space, go for a walk (damn sore foot notwithstanding) and then get on with those editing notes.
Then edit.  Although in this case I think it's going to be a major rewrite.

* An irony, since the story is called Evolved.

My radio alarm woke me up on Friday with a story about the discovery that Neanderthal Man was capable of art 125 000 years ago.  As I'm currently writing a novelette about prehistoric Man, this was of immense interest.  Suddenly everyone was interested in the exact subject I've been [loosely] researching for weeks.  
Later that morning, I was doing just exactly that - researching ancient man and trying to figure out what he ate off (if anything).  I found an interesting article that quoted something by a woman who was easy to remember.  She had scarlet hair, an undercut, several piercings and black-rimmed glasses.  At the time I thought she was a scientist but I think she writes about science, which is a different thing.  Anyway, I thought her theories were interesting and moved on, not giving it much thought.
Until later that same day, I opened up the SFX that drops through the letterbox on regular intervals - and found an interview with her!  Same picture and everything, thus instantly recognisable.  (Also, I recognised the title of a book she's written Scatter, Adapt, and Remember:  How Humans Will Survive a Mass Extinction.  It's not a title you forget easily.)
TWO coincidences in one day?
Weird!
I found this picture of someone's idea of Neanderthal Woman;  a tad goddess-like, perhaps?

I dreamt last night that the alarm didn't go off and I was only woken up at 7.15 which was the time we were supposed to leave to go to the station - much panic in the dream, which - weirdly - took place in the house where I grew up.  As it transpired, I set my tablet alarm to 6.05.......for Monday to Friday.  Aaargh!  So life imitated dreamland as my daughter burst in and shouted at me to get up at 6.25.  We made it, though, and off she went to a university taster-type day at ten to eight with just a flutter of nerves.
As it was such a beautiful morning, I walked home from Waterloo station.  The sun was just coming up behind some or other hideous building near the South Bank and the view from Waterloo Bridge was spectacular. The water looked like metal and a soft, golden light touched all the buildings.  The air was quite fresh but for the first time in a long time, I noticed how foul the car exhaust fumes were whenever a vehicle sped past.  In London, one is so used to the general stink that it goes unnoticed most of the time (though not in summer when one generally chokes to death on the sidewalk.)  Had a coffee to try and wake up and then strolled back to Bloomsbury, circling Russell Square several times.
What a lovely morning!
And an excellent time to do some work.  The first draft of my new Exodus Sequence story is going rather badly - lurching along with zero character development, crap descriptions and fading plot lines but for once I'm not too concerned.  I just need to get words down on the page to get my confidence back.  And then I'll attack it and fix it up.  One day.

I'm getting through the weekend in a blanket.  The central heating started to fail last weekend, refusing to go on despite the fact that the thermostat claimed the flat was cold enough.  The whole on-off control panel refused to work.  And it was only installed at the end of September.  By Friday, it had given up the ghost entirely.  Two rather small oil heaters (chewing up electricity) just aren't helping.  One of them is rather old and too heavy to move about, while the brand new one (which I couldn't afford) takes all day to change the temperature of a room from freezing to slightly cold.  I began shutting doors yesterday and by evening, the kitchen was finally warm.  It was gloomy yesterday too, with pinpricks of sleet coming down:  very depressing.  I am so unbelievably sick and tired of trudging around the squares in of inner London so didn't want to venture forth either, even though going for a walk in the cold is the only way to warm up.
This morning has dawned bright and sunny - and very cold.  But at least it feels more cheerful and my morning sprint-walk around Russell Square meant I warmed up quite nicely.
What do you do when it's too cold in your house to exist?  Go out?  I'd love to go to the shops or go out for coffee or something......but I've run out of money.  My entire salary vanished in the first week of February:  had to buy a dehumidifier as the mould and damp suddenly began to colonise previously unaffected rooms in spectacular fashion (it's been a gargantuan problem in other rooms for years.)  And then that urgently-required heater.  It cost bloody £65 but is just too small to cope.  Wish I could have afforded the bigger one.
Sigh.  Don't ask about getting the central heating fixed.  That's another blog that involves a long rant about Camden Council.  The less said about them the better (although can I just mention to someone somewhere that "24 hours emergency" does not equal FIVE DAYS to get a repairman out.  Hello?  Maths, anyone?)
Time to do some writing.  My heating pad has warmed up my back nicely and the sun is pouring in through the windows.  It's Sunday morning, probably the best morning of the week.
As for that thermostat: it has finally decided that it's 15C, having being stuck on 18 since September.  

Even on the coldest day in January, Pigeon Man never wears a coat.  In summer, he wears a black T-shirt;  when it's colder, the sleeves are longer.  When it's very cold, he might stoop to a second layer.  Today under his black sweatshirt, I noticed a red T-shirt peeping out;  his black one was (hopefully) in the wash.
The pigeons adore him.  They must know him, though how, I can't be sure.  Does he smell of pigeon?  He smells but it's mostly BO.  His long, wavy, grey hair hasn't been washed for decades, possibly;  he also has a long grey beard, so that he resembles a slightly grubby wizard.  He has "local character" stamped all over him.  When the pigeons land on him, he stands very still, though I've seen them cling on happily if he strolls about on the grass, his arms outstretched.  They land on his head, shoulders, arms and flock about him with much flapping of wings.  This morning I heard him say, "hello, my little friends."  It was rather sweet.  He's utterly harmless and I don't think he has lost a single marble.  He's not a tramp or a nutter and he looks as if he might actually be capable of interesting conversation.
Sometimes accompanying him is a small woman in a smart but very old suit, whom I presume is his wife/partner.  I've seen them in the supermarket together on occasion, reduced to the ordinary but not ordinary at all:  he has a distance in his eyes that makes me think he suffers in a supermarket the way I do.  Too many people, too much noise, too bright, too grasping.  As I've recently started talking to the squirrels I feed, I suspect that I may be heading in the same direction as Pigeon Man.......though hopefully better groomed and washed, and possibly better at pretending to be normal.  It goes without saying that the squirrels love him too, and climb up all over him.
There are several characters in Bloomsbury whom I see around the squares, feeding the wildlife.  I once had a conversation with a tall woman who carries several shopping bags around with her, resembling - slightly - a bag lady, though she's certainly not homeless.  She has rather wild white hair that she dyes an occasional pinky-orange.  I once had a long conversation with her on a smaller square where she was feeding enormous walnuts to squirrels.  She called them "darling" (I call them "sweetie") and they knew her well enough to rummage about in her bags looking for the nuts they knew were there.  What surprised me about her was the poshness of her accent.  She was clearly educated and intelligent and made me think of that phrase "gentile poverty."  We discussed squirrels and trees and Kew and though she told me her name, I've since forgotten it.
She's also friends with Pigeon Man and if I was a better person, I would get to know them more.  I wonder what they talk about?  Squirrels?  Nuts?  Pigeons?  Trees?  The meaning of life?

This diary began on the first day of writing what turned out to be That Difficult Novel.  I can still remember the joy I felt, going for a walk afterwards in the winteriness of Russell Square, all hyped on coffee and Great Expectations.  That first page that I managed to write, so proudly, had to be hammered at several times before it took any shape and all the joy soon left me as the immensity of novel's premise dawned on me.  Does anything you write ever turn out the way it's mean to?
But now it's done.  I can't think what else to do to it to improve it.  It's the best I can do, for now anyway.  So what do I do with it?  The short, commercial, lighthearted novel I wrote last year is currently sitting in an agent's cyber slush pile.  Do I try and find a different agent for this one?  Would it be really weird if two different agents took on two different novels?  
Is that ever likely to happen???!!!???!
I had thought to find a publisher instead.  Virago, I thought.  They're perfect.  They'll like this.  It's right up their street.  But they don't accept anything that hasn't gone through an agent.  Is it worth my while to keep looking?  Most publishers' doors are closed nowadays.  I remember running into this problem a thousand times long ago, doors obstinately closed in my face because I wasn't enough of a celebrity - let alone a human being - for any publisher to bother with.
So why don't I just self-publish this one too?
Because I've failed as a self-published author - not because my writing is bad (it isn't brilliant but the most successful self-published authors, I've noticed, write utter garbage) but because I'm not very good at the marketing side of things, it would seem.  I would love some help and that kind of help would come from an agent.
And in the end, really, I just really, really want my books in a pile at the table near the door of Waterstones.  I want people to read my books.  I think This Difficult Novel is worth reading. I worked my bloody arse off on it. 
​The magic of that first day, when I wrote the first page, eventually wound up in the novel.  The magic is there.  I just wish others could find it too.

Pardon my swearingness but I have to say this out loud:  I fucking hate Windows 10.  I miss Vista.  I miss the way it was neat and tidy and attractive.  I miss being able to find things easily.  I miss actually knowing where my documents are.  Vista was pretty.  It had a big fat start button in pretty colours.  Everything about Vista was big and fat and round.  I love that.  
But fucking Windows 10 ....... all I wanted to do this morning was edit my goddamn gigantic novel with its Easts and Wests that have gotten all mixed up (no, I don't know how that happened either).  First I had to spend 45 minutes hanging about while Windows did a HUGE update.  I mean, what the fuck.  Why can't it update in tiny increments, you know, like 5 minutes a day.  Why does it have to do everything at once?
And when it was finally finished, it had CHANGED MY DOCUMENTS.  Bastard!  WHY would it do that?  I had a violent panic attack trying to find them.  HOURS of work.  Not only my writing stuff but also finances - all those Excel sheets.  All the important documents I had downloaded.  I howled at my daughter through the bathroom door and she came running to rescue me.  We searched and searched until finally she said, just open Excel.  I did and it came up with the most recent Excel files I had used.  And where had ALL my work (hundreds of folders and documents) been moved to?  Somewhere weird on the C Drive, stashed in a folder name I didn't recognise.  What the fuck was that about?  I've only just started learning how to use this computer when it goes and messes it all up again.  Is this going to happen every time there's an update?  
I fucking hate Windows 10.  Or the complete brainless nincompoop who invented it.  Arsehole.
I'm now on my second KitKat break of the morning and STILL haven't started sorting my Easts from my Wests.  
​Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

More than a year and a half has passed since I finished the first draft of The Difficult Novel.  Once again, I am working on it.  It's not half as bad as I thought.  In fact, it's quite good, which is reassuring.  But it remains difficult.  I'm concerned that it takes too long to get going.  If this was a story of Beauty and the Beast (to use an analogy), then you have to wait until chapter 14 to meet the Beast!  But the greatest difficulty lies in its length.  I wrote the novel with one chapter per document, thus had no way of telling how long the novel was.  Part of my current edit is getting all those chapters into one document.  I'm up to chapter 18 and already I'm over 90 000 words.  I suspect that this novel is close to 200 000 words.  Dear God, a serious door-stopper!  Who the hell would ever publish that!!  Who would even want to read it?!?  It's treacle slow and intensely detailed and I worry that no one would ever want to get to the phenomenal resolution.  It's worth it when you get there and I fear chopping the novel down (as virtually everyone might suggest) would take away the impact of the ending.
On the other hand, a novel of 800 000 words* recently won the Booker prize, so perhaps I shouldn't worry.  This Difficult Novel may be difficult for a reason:  two hundred thousand words of gold, perhaps.  Or so I keep telling myself.
Did anyone ever look at Michelangelo's David and say, hmm, no way, buddy, WAY too big.  It's not going to fit in any doorway.  You gotta cut the legs off. 
I don't want to cut the legs off my novel, ​she said obstinately.

* sorry, it wasn't 800K words but over 800 pages, which comes to only 267K words.  Perhaps there is no such thing as "too long".