Draft

So I actually wrote eight pages yesterday, before closing down and packing up and being collected. M'friends Harry and Louise took me down to Barnard Castle, where we were staying overnight with friends; we drank champagne, ate soup'n'cheese and then taxi'd to a near village for a gig by the New Rope String Band, old friends and favourites of mine. Who were fabulous, and I opened a door on cue at a crucial moment and thus they couldn't have done it without me, which was nice.

To the pub after, for beers with Pete & Tim from the band; then back to Barney and more champagne. Lord, but my friends are tough on me.

And all this time, I hadn't finished the story; but I was out of bed first this morning, and made coffee and took my little handheld 'puter out and wrote a thousand words while people came and went around me, and thus got to the end. Tomorrow there must be a whole lot of cutting, because nine thousand words is absurdly too long for a reading-draft (all my short stories are long stories, at the moment; it just seems to be the rhythm that I'm in. Actually, 'all' is an exaggeration, and it does seem to be mostly the ghost stories - but ghost stories is most of them, these days. Memo to self: must write more stories. More variety of stories. *nods*), and I can't face the cutting tonight, but we have a draft, at least. Something to work with.

Also books & CDs to sell, so I'm down to minor anxieties from the high stress worry levels of last week. Which is good.