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Hard at it

As is often the way when you're on a creative roll the static becomes defeaning. Where, only a few scant weeks ago you were screaming for the next idea to come from anywhere, it didn't even have to be a particularly good idea, just something to work with.

Pah, those arid days seem long ago, just as the complacent slimmer looks at a photograph of his earlier fat self (most likely clad in a bright shirt and wearing the sort of smile that only fat holidaying goons can muster) and tuts indulgently so I regard my inspiration-free alter ego of not so long ago with a particularly smug and annoying brand of pity.

But where was I? oh yes, static. There are now that many ideas churning around that I am forced to regard some with suspicion and the old stern eye. I must learn not to get wildly excited when yet another thought pops into my rapidly overheating head, I must learn to fix it with a clear and steady gaze and inquire whether it is a bona fide idea or an imposter, likely to turn into one of the approximately five thousand half-written short stories and stubs of poems which clutter up my hard drive and journals (and which I can never bring myself to delete, oh for the iron will of a Bunting).

For the record, actual ideas currently in production include a (long) poem and one (shorter) one, both of which conform to methods I won't bother going into here. I am also editing the novel (again, I know) and hope to have knocked it into some sort of publishable shape within a year or so. There should also be an essay (after Orwell) on British food up on the Publog sometime soonish.

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