Flatlining

Now that I'm only writing weekly, I think by definition these entries are going to be a little metatextual at first, talking about what I've done and how things are going. Whilst this is in no way a bad thing - after all that's probably a description of a large proportion of the blogosphere - I hope I can get back to picking reality apart in short order.

In general I think I can report that this past week's experiment with the diversion of my creative juices has been a moderate success. On what would have been the designated blogging days I did manage to write short sections of my novel, perhaps comparable in length to the unwritten blog entries from those days.

It's still not enough. Even though I've now managed to drag my protagonists Genie and Wendi from the night club to the beach and finally to the hotel, it's been one of those hard going passages, a sequence in which I already know the destination so there are fewer surprises in store than normal and therefore I find it less... exciting. To return to the archaeological metaphor, this is archaeology by ultrasound; this site has already been thoroughly scanned before anyone lifted a trowel. What I've been up to is mere spadework.

Not that there haven't been little surprises though. The ultrasound doesn't reveal everything and I've uncovered a couple of gems, including one of whose existence I was hitherto completely unaware - and yet it offers a clear signpost to and foreshadowing of something later in the novel.

Still, if you don't mind a mixed metaphor, there are uncharted waters ahead. Once they've left the hotel in the morning, Genie and Wendi will be parted for nearly a year, and I'm not sure what happens when next they meet. Then there's another missing scene of Genie crossing a desert in the underworld. All unknown quantities; I can't wait.

In the meantime though, the health of my blog visitor statistics seems to have been failing. Normally it's a fairly healthy heartbeat; systole blog, diastole day-off, systole blog, diastole day-off. In the last week however it's begun to flatline. Not that it matters at all really, but as a number freak it's the kind of thing the exercises an unhealthy fascination over me. Mmmm, statistics. Why did someone in Japan read that blog entry on that day, and what led someone to Google for "Caves of Androzani overrated" and end up reading one of my Dimensionally Transcendental Confession entries?

Like many things, I suspect this statistical obsession is merely a very clever form of displacement activity; whilst agonizing over my blog audience ratings I'm neither blogging nor writing the novel. In the real world I am absolutely certain that the transition to a weekly systole won't do my blog any harm whatsoever in the long run. Maybe I can liken it to going into a coma or perhaps (more excitingly) going into suspended animation for the duration of a journey to another world.

And as I mentioned earlier; there's lots to write about. I've still to write the final third of the Dimensionally Transitional Confession memoir, there are other memoirs in that head thing of mine, and there are any number of things that I've started pondering.

I'll leave you with the following thought - a "Next Time on this Blog..." if you like.

Why are the things that are fun bad for you? Societal conditioning or god's sick sense of humour?