The Method to My Madness Part Two, or Yellowcake Springs: 40 in 40

I did it – I completed 40,000 words of my new novel Yellowcake Springs in 40 days, leaving me one more day of my summer holiday to bask in glory. I’ll get to basking in a minute. It was a struggle for much of this time and there were a dozen reasons why I could have given up, but I didn’t, so now I’m the proud owner of 138 double spaced pages of print. Yippee.

The madness is  in thinking that all of this means something, that I am (or at least might be) on the road to success, even if I can’t write an entire novel in 28 days or less – not without the relevant CD anyway 😉 The madness is in attempting to write a novel when you’ve got six weeks of freedom only, and by freedom I mean about two hours in the morning when my wife frees me from the need to look after my 3 and 1 year-old children. That’s the mad part.

The method is in having adapted my writing to fit around the strictures of my workaday existence.  I am now in the habit of writing novels over the course of two very distinct six week blocks, over the period of two years. I wrote The Kingdom of Four Rivers in Dec 06/Jan 07 and Dec 07/Jan 08 (with revision taking me up to April 08), and now it looks like I might be able to write Yellowcake Springs in Dec 08/Jan 09 (done) and Dec 09/Jan 10. I’m actually starting to like this method, as it gives me several months to chew over what I’ve done already with a view to preparing for the second stint. I’m relieved NOT to have the time to continue now, for I’m very definitely out of steam (and out of planning). So now I’ll turn my attention to my job for a while, and leave the subconscious to do the work I know it can.