am i human yet?

So here it is (OK, it’s been here for a couple of weeks but there have been all those holidays to celebrate and there’s been all that champagne to be drunk and all those tables to fall off. I’m a busy person).* The manuscript of Advice for Strays, marked up for its very final edit by my editor at Cape. It’s been printed out double-spaced and in 86 point font or something so it looks huge. I actually only sent her five haiku but she made it resemble a long novel. It’s, like, magic or something. Get a load of this:

Yes, I know that’s only a large envelope. This is the beast itself:

And if you enlarged that I’m pretty sure you didn’t see the date on the letter reads 9th December. Still doesn’t show the size though. How about a side view?

OK, I put the wooden African lion my sister bought me on top of it to give you a sense of scale, but as you don’t know how big the lion is you’ll just have to take my word for it (which by the way, you should never do).

We have until May to “get it in”. This means that I have until April 27th until I start to think to myself, I really should have a look at what needs doing to this novel. I’ve got another three days. Loads of time. Until this time I’ll be twittering feverishly, messing about with photographs, cleaning the front step with a toothbrush, that sort of thing. I believe they have a word for this kind of activity. I also believe this word may be procrastination.

As an example, and one which is right in front of your noses, here I am writing this blog post. This, my friends, is a perfect, real-life demonstration of procrastination in action. Maybe that should be inaction in action. Every word I write here is putting off the time when I put this laptop down, pick up the enormous envelope, shake out its contents, remove the long elastic bands and turn to the first page. Then, naturally, I shall put the whole thing down, having forgotten to make myself that vital fourth coffee of the day. Once this has been successfully made and brought up to my writing study sofa I’ll get settled and look at the first page of the manuscript again. But not before organising the cushions. Both behind me and on the sofa on the other side of the room. Oh, and there will be some tweet notifications popping up because I will have forgotten to turn off Tweetdeck. Just to make sure, I’ll have to read these, and, most likely, respond with some inane comment. By which time there will be another seven tweets which I will also have to read and…with an almost super human effort I will finally turn off Tweetdeck. This will leave me feeling bereft and somewhat isolated, so to comfort myself I’ll pop downstairs to the kitchen to hunt or gather some food to nibble on. Serious thought will go into what I should eat while involving myself with the serious business of a final edit. Will it be slivers of cheese – I eat more cheese than the rest of the UK population put together – manchego, gouda filled with cumin seeds, a creamy, mature camembert? Or something sweeter, chocolate truffles perhaps? Possibly a few slices of fantastic sweetly-salty Serrano ham. I will, eventually, decide against any of these for the simple reason that my fridge is full of nothing but fail. In this case, the fail consists of one unopened tin of anchovies (what’s it doing in the fridge anyway?), two eggs and thousands of small jars of different mustards, relishes and mayonaises. And a small, shrivelled bunch of some unidentifiable leaves. It was once basil, I think.

So you see how this can happen, right? It’s not just me, right?

Still, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new year, etc., and I’m feeling extremely motivated right now. So once I’ve shampooed the doormat & taken those important photographs of the biltong my sister brought me from Africa I’ll get down to the edit.

PS. For all those of you (Hi Mum) who have read previous posts, I’ve been promising to post about my mind-blowing trip to the colonies USA. I will of course get round to it, but unless I start writing about what’s happening right now (listening to the amazing Rodrigo y Gabriela, in case you’re interested) I’ll forget what’s happening right now while trying to remember what happened last week because it was so fascinating and entertaining I simply must tell everyone about it but what about that other thing that happened you know the thing with the beetroots oh God I can’t remember and then I feel guilty and stressed and OH MY GOD WHY AM I DOING THIS? See? That’s what happens. And we wouldn’t want my mental health compromised any more than it already is.

* Advice please on my punctuation here. I’m pretty sure it’s not correct, but I have to go and buy some matches and boot polish for…some reason…so don’t have time to work it out. Thanks.

Tags:   Advice for Strays · procrastination · Writing8 Comments