A good writing day

Yesterday I wrote a new, tentative, re-draft of chapter three of my punk women book. Because I'm essentially re-structuring and re-writing the book using it's existing, but increasingly unmanageable and incoherent, structure, the process of re-planning and re-drafting is akin to picking shards of glass out of a wound. Or (less grim analogy) to doing a really complicated jigsaw very, very slowly.

It is not a fun process, particularly as the main reason I'm re-doing the first three chapters is because they will be part of a proposal to send out to various literary agents. But, it is interesting to watch a new narrative unfold from my old interviews and secondary material. Originally the narrative was thematic, not chronological really, and it's amazing how different it feels already as a result of re-organising the material chronologically.

I re-drafted, solidly, from 4pm yesterday to 8:30pm, at which point I'd finished, my writing hand felt like it was about to fall off, and I'd missed the campaign meeting about bus re-regulation in Manchester. Which is probably for the best as I suspect I won't be able to commit the time to the campaign that it will need.

I then moved from my desk, which lives under my bed in the living room,  to the kitchen. Where I had a horrible time making very mediocre soup (the blender decided to leak for some reason, plus the tomatoes were the wrong ones to use in retrospect), but perfect hot chocolate (white chocolate + cocoa powder + hot milk and boiling water. Who knew?)

Afterwards I leant back on the sofa in the living room and listened to Ceremonials with my eyes shut, feeling increasingly blissed out. Lovely. Not every day ends like that.