Stop the World - I need to pee!

"Just as you began to feel that you could make good use of time, there was no time left to you." Lisa Alther.

The teetering brink of autumn constantly reminds me that time is screeching past.


It was around this time last year that I first returned to America, to a wonderful week spent with Tina's family. That climaxed in an early Thanksgiving and this year, it looks like we'll experience the same thing. Tina's parents are coming up at the end of the month for a family get-together.

This time, of course, we won't be 'just visiting.' We're here to stay.

Moving to America was one of my three 'things to do before I'm thirty.' And I've managed it. Hooray! I also managed to achieve my second ambition - to earn a living by writing. But the third - to get a book published - stays tantalisingly beyond my grasp.

The arrival of Autumn is a harsh reminder that time is running out. I've got barely four months to get myself published before I turn thirty. That's just not going to happen.

It's a bit of a disappointment, but writing has been firmly on the back burner for almost a year now.

Following on from our visit to America in 2006, I settled into writing big time - and got stuck into Nanowrimo, a month-long writing competition in which you aim to complete 50,000 words in less than 30 days.

I managed to achieve that target - just - with my Adventure Eddy story Bootleg Boys. But my writing sort of teetered out once Nanowrimo was over. Work and the move to America diverted my attention.

Which means that Bootleg Boys is still unfinished, languishing on my hard drive. The problem was the ending. Nothing quite 'fit.' I have about four different versions now and not one of them is the 'definitive one.'

The realisation that I haven't written anything significant for almost a year is not a comfortable one...

(Well, actually, I have written dozens of successful radio adverts, a smutty story published worldwide, some national advertising and marketing copy, an Internet article linked to by the Wall Street Journal Online and my articles on 'being ginger' got my mug on a BBC documentary)

...so I have decided to spend October finishing what I started.

Bootleg Boys will get finished, by hook or by crook. And it'll be good. In fact, it will be miles better than Adventure Eddy. It might not be good enough to get published - but it will be a step closer towards that goal.

And in November, when Nanowrimo comes around again, I will start off a 50,000 word adventure about something completely different.

But until then?

Adventure Eddy rides again.