Been super busy with work so no blogging time. What little time I have had this week has been spent writing. The MA novel has now broken 6,000 words and observant reader of this blog will have already noticed I’ve added a little progress bar in the sidebar to keep me motivated as much as to keep  anyone out in the ether informed. I’ll be posting something more thoughtful and detailed about the process I’m stumbling into with this book sometime next week.

My other task this week has been redrafting a short story I wrote at the tale end of 2011. It has sat in a folder for a few months until I felt sufficiently distanced from it to begin the editing process. when working I get the odd twenty minute break here and there where I can take a look at a draft and so I always make sure I follow Chuck Palahniuk’s advice and have a print out of whatever I am working on to hand when those few minutes present themselves. This week I spent those fragments of time brutally editing my short story to within an inch of its printed existence, inspired by the way my tutor (quite rightly) savaged the first draft of a chapter of my MA novel a couple of weeks back. And it must be said, both my MA chapter and my short story are better for it.

The short story is nearly ready to go out into the world. I need to record myself reading the latest draft and add a few more lines of dialogue to a key scene and it should be ready. In a neat piece of synchronicity I’ve found myself getting into The Civil Wars over the last week. Their song C’est la mort stopped me in my tracks. If my little short fiction work in progress were a short film then this track would be the closing title music. Here’s hoping my little bit of prose can convey even a fraction of the feeling in this song:

The possibly dodgy French in the title of this post was inspired by John Paul White’s pronunciation in the intro of the video above. Any French speakers (native or otherwise) should feel free to post corrections in the comments. I’m off to add some more words to my WIP.