400th post

The great sitcom writer Ken Levine posted the 300th entry on his wonderful blog today. By a strange coincidence, this is 400th entry on my blog. Alas, that's about all we share in common. He's a hugely successful, award-winning comedy scribe of many decades standing. Me, I'm bashing my way through a Warhammer novel for Games Workshop. It'll be my 17th novel to get published. In fact, it'll be my 17th novel full stop. It's a strange thing, when you tell people you're writing your 17th novel, they asked if all of them have been published. Well, yes - I wouldn't write a novel unless I thought it was going to be published. I write for a living. The results ain't always pretty, but they're almost always published. So, I guess that's an achievement of sorts.

Still waiting on feedback from River City on my sample scenes. I know the production office is fiendishly busy but I'm fast reaching the point where I wish they'd just put me out of misery, so I can stop thinking about the possibility of being invited to the River City writers' workshop. I don't know what's worse - the waiting or the hope. Right now, I guess both of them are driving me a little barmy. Also in the mix is my growing case of cabin fever. Chained to the desk, thrashing out a minimum of five thousand words a day, a picture frame hung over the window to stop me getting distracted.

The book feels like it's going somewhere, but until I pass the halfway mark [I've got 10,000 words to go before that happens] I won't get comfortable with it. The novel's got a huge ensemble cast and that's created it own fun and games, just trying to keep all the names and characters straight in my head. Think I'll kill one or two in the next chapter, make life easier for myself. Book's due in two weeks and I'm supposed to deliver the first half today. Barring a miracle, that's not going to happen but I'll get mighty close.

Tomorrow I'm heading in to Edinburgh for the second of our mentoring meetings with screenwriter and director Adrian Mead. The three mentees have all created one-page pitch documents for our respective projects and now it's time to talk about them. I had five or six ideas when the process initially began, and chose one thinking it might offer the chance for some light relief. So far, it's turning into a typically dark and bleak tale, exactly the sort of thing I always end up writing. I guess I've found my voice and it's an ultra-violent Eeyore who kills everyone he meets.

Like I said, not a lot of similarities between me and Ken Levine.