Milestones

Last week I finally finished the third draft of my novel. I've been working on it for about six years now, and I'm happy with where it's at after hitting this milestone. This is the joy of writing part-time: you get to bemoan how long everything takes. Apparently our syndicated Lotto tickets didn't win us millions of dollars on Saturday night - the first tickets I've ever bought, and I'd say the last, as well. Never really saw the point of throwing money away. So until that changes I guess everything is going to take me years to finish. Like Urban Driftwood, at nine years to publication. I wonder how long it will take me to arrange some sort of marketing drive that involves more than just reiterating on my blog that it took nine years to complete.

Anyway, now that I've finished the third draft, I'd like to get onto creating the covers. I say covers because this book is too long to publish as one volume, so I need two covers. Brilliant landscape photographer Off-Black is going to collaborate on this project, which is very exciting, but as he and wife Fish have just had a beautiful baby girl (three weeks early!) I'm guessing that his time will not be his own for a little while yet. It's been almost 2 years since we had a baby anywhere near that small in our house, and I seem to recall that when they're that little, time is not a luxury you can afford to spend on much other than making it through the days and nights.

So, you might ask, with Urban Driftwood complete and no more redrafting to do on my novel at this stage, and with spring in the air and stuff to be planted in the garden, and lawns to mow and hedges to trim and all that, what have I done this weekend to make sure that I'm being as productive as I try to encourage other people to be? Well, to be honest, I played X-Box. Only for a couple of hours this afternoon, while the weeds are rushing up to swallow the onions. Oh well, sometimes it's what you have to do.

It might have had something to do with Gray's 33rd birthday party that I managed to make it to last night. I'm not used to going out on a Saturday night and not getting home until - *gasp* - after midnight. Add to that not just Singstar but a dozen Singstar discs of songs and I had a ball. Not sure that anyone having to listen to me murder Johnny Cash and Freddie Mercury would have had as good a night, but I had fun. Nothing quite like pseudo-karaoke on one cocktail and a couple of beers to liven up a party.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting for the rest of the second episode of The Pretender to stream down so I can watch it. Absolutely brilliant political satire and free to watch thanks to TVNZ coming to the party and NOT CHARGING for their on-demand service. That's progressive (No, nothing to do with Jim Anderton).

Right, well I've watched that now and it was fantastic. And somehow the weekend has disappeared.