Barbara and I have built a little break into the middle of our writing time. We know that we can’t work really intensively for two and a bit weeks. That’s too much altogether. We had to anticipate that we’d run out of puff and organise our schedule to take time out.

We started this longish period of writing with the introduction and a couple of chapters in hand. We’ve now completed another three chapters and we have three more to go. We made good progress last week. We wrote fast. We invented some new things. We’re pretty happy with what we have on a first run through. But now…

We are certainly in a small dip in energy and focus. It’s pretty tiring writing so much so quickly. And so this weekend we’ve had Saturday off. Today, Monday will also be a day off as I am off out of the house giving a seminar about some of my other work. This weekend, we’ve seen friends, been to a film and had a meal out. Barbara has worked with her poetry group. We’ve done some of these things separately so we’re out of each others’ hair. We’ve tried to take our minds away from book writing.

But we did do some preparatory work on Sunday, accumulating some of the material we will start with on Tuesday. However, when we looked at our plan we had a few inklings that the next, last steps may not be quite what we need. So we know already that when we get back to it on Tuesday that we will be starting with a definite chunk of material, but we may need to play around a little with what goes where in the final three chapters. We need a good firm plan, and can’t write fast without one.

That’s OK. We have allowed enough time for talking and moving things around, as well as for writing as fast as we possibly can. We’re back to it tomorrow.