The writing competition I want to enter is accepting entries of between 80,000 and 150,000 words. Let's get to work.

So yesterday, I wrote 2,104 words. Which is not bad going, seeing that I got terribly distracted by something purely idiotic on the way, but it was a pretty weak 2,104 words. No fluidity, no natural flow. The interaction between my two characters sounded artificial, awkward - even though it was about an awkward situation. I am someone who is not particularly fluent at social events and in social situations in general. I enjoy solitude immensely - the joys of solitude are outrageously underrated, nowadays.
Therefore, give me a good monologue, a character's interior life, inner thoughts and doubts and hopes and turmoils, great. Then as soon as I start describing interaction with people, it just goes a bit pear shaped ...

I regularly become obsessed with things. Not in an unhealthy I way - at least, I don't think so. I didn't say I OFTEN become obsessed with things - often would give the obsession a casual, repetitive, inocuous quality with a routine-like flavour. It is just that if I become obsessed with something I could do, something I'd like to do, something I want to do (and I have quite a list of those) then I usually end up doing it.
My latest one (and it has been with me since last November at least) is the part-time MA in Victorian Studies at Birkbeck college. I had always thought I would become a university lecturer and would spend my life writing books and studying them and writing about them. Then life decided otherwise - too much studying kills the thirst for knowledge, and I just wanted to try completely new things. I became obsessed with music. So I started writing about it instead.
But the thirst has come back. I've started thinking that  it would be a good idea to go back to studying again, especially an era that has always, well, obsessed me. I even have an idea of what topics I'd like to look at if I ever went on to do a PhD. Only the - hopefully near - future - as well as the state of my finances - will tell me whether this is possible, but the obsession is here to stay.

I am currently working on my first novel. It is called I am a Muse. I found the title before I had anything else, and it started its young life as an idea for a short story. Then I thought about it again and again and, last winter, an idea took shape in my head and stuck with me. I have been developing that idea ever since, but started real work on it only in June of this year. About a month ago, I started typing, without knowing where I was going ... The story and the characters are taking shape before my very eyes, names are emerging from the shadows of the page ...
So far, I have managed to sneak in one scene from real life, a cat called Dummy, a Crimson Lady, a club night called The Pleasure Gardens, an isolated Victorian house by the sea, some Japanese girls with multicoloured hair and nails, a dead artist, a lost muse, a willow tree and Barry Lyndon ...

I have also finished editing a collection of texts (I would hesitate to call them poems) and I am working with an artist to create some illustrations based on those texts.

Welcome to my blog and to my mini website. This space is not about me but about my writing. My posts here will probably not be very regular, but I hope that this mini-website will give people a better idea of what I do.