November was a pretty good and productive one for me. My main target was to write 50,000 words of a story with the working title ‘Once’, which didn’t go exactly to plan, but I still made good progress. In the end I wrote 31368 words, which is still more than I would write in any other month. I had a couple of times when I was ill, mostly due to lack of sleep I think and that really put the brakes on my writing plans. I’m not able to turn on writing mode when my head isn’t working at 100%. I’ve not been feeling great this week, although I’m pretty much all good now besides a endlessly snotty nose, so I haven’t written a word of ‘Once’ for about 7 days. I really hoped to get up to 40,000 words by yesterday but it wasn’t meant to be. Still come Monday I’m going to go full force again and hoping to get to 50,000 words by the middle of December.

What I have been doing this week, is reading. I’ve been working the late shifts, so starting at 12 has given me a lay in each day and time to read in bed before. I started reading The Passenger by Cormac McCarthy on Monday, which I’m very much enjoying. I have around 90 pages left, and hoping to finish it tomorrow morning. It’s his first novel since The Road, from around fifteen years ago, and he has another book out next week, which is a companion novel to The Passenger. I did struggle with the writing style at first, but once I got into it, I’m finding it much easier to read. Tomorrow I’m going on a little weekend trip and will be taking The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks with me. I’ve had that book for over ten years and never read it. My fiction lecturer from the first year of university recommended it and it’s just sat on various shelves since then. It suddenly popped into my head earlier this week, so I decided it was time to actually read it.

I had to stop writing this post because the trailer for the new Indiana Jones film was just released, now titled Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I know a lot of people think that Harrison Ford is too old for the role, but I’m very excited for the film. The trailer makes it looks like a lot of fun and now I can’t wait. It’ll be great to see Ford in the role one last time. On other news Metallica have also released a new song, Lux Æterna, from their upcoming album 72 Seasons. I’ve listened to it more times than I can count this week. It’s short and punchy. It’s a good teaser of the rest of the album and I can’t wait to listen to that over and over again next year.

Thanks for reading and until next time,