BEING AS THERE'S not a lot to say today I'll post about what pudding I ate last night... Now you'd think this was a state secret, for it's not on their website, but the frozen food chain Iceland are doing a yummy caramel apple cheesecake for £2 and boy! ~ is it a cut above the run-of-the-mill cheap-an'-chavvy tucker they usually stock. The photo isn't actually Iceland's own (hey maybe it is a state secret: I feel a Terry Pratchett=style international thriller coming on here). Anyway, unless you're diabetic go out and buy one. If you are diabetic I can't think of a more beautiful way of committing suicide...

Finally I did put pen to paper concerning my Great Novel to be. Being as I have written (attempted) novels before, I can say I know something about the working arrangements that suit me and writing into the dark I absolutely hate. Not that I'm unwilling to improvise, for that's the very stuff of fictional life, but unless I've planned out where my story's going on a pretty blow-by-blow basis I find myself constantly grinding to a halt.

So what I'm doing is dividing my story into about five books. The actual number's immaterial for it's book one that matters now. This I plot out into five or ten chapters. Chapter one I need to note scene by scene what happens, how etc. This isn't my writing out a book in note form first; it's purely meant to be a guide to spur me onwards when I do write it. Not knowing how to say something's is a problem I enjoy deliberating upon; but not knowing what I'm supposed to be saying ~ that really has me stuck and lost. Hence the forward planning. It always worked in the past and shall work again.

"Inspiration" or at least a measure of self-belief and excitement is crucial at this stage. But as Anthony Trollope, I think it was, famously stated: "I only write when I feel inspired. And I make sure inspiration strikes as I sit down to write at nine o'clock every morning!" If you can't push yourself on to work, no matter how discouraged, flat or lost you might feel, you ain't never gonna finish a novel. It's just too much of a gargantuan task to rely on feeling "inspired" every day to get started! Hence my pre-planning. Am I making sense here?

I wish I could tell yous all what I'm writing about, but this is a tale from the past with the bare facts dictated by history, the drama fleshed out by me...

... and now I must begone! For this internet caff's closing. Night-night y'all...