Hee

55,555 words. Obviously the place to break. (Oh, and 3593 sentences, 1248 paragraphs, 4118 lines. I do like statistics, even though I struggle every time to say the word. As usual, I'm averaging 4 characters per word; that always surprises me a little, because I think of myself as less direct than that. Of the polysyllabic tendency. I guess dialogue helps to pull the average down, and I don't have extensive non-fiction to measure it against. Also averaging 15 words per sentence, which is a little down on my common 17 or 18, but it's a very fragmented narrative. She's a very fragmented woman, she thinks in broken sentences. Which I've been very aware of in the writing, and it's quite nice to see it reflected in the numbers.)

My blessings. Let me show you them.

This time I really am done with the university for this week. I had to fit in an extra tutorial today - but it's over, and I have finally come home and had lunch (is it still lunch, at 4.00pm?) and now I get the weekend to myself. Next week I have tutorials on two days at least, and I have to give a two-hour talk on how the business of writership is changing; but! I have found the silver lining in the cloud! Because I am not allowed a key to the office I need to work in, therefore I have to get a caretaker to come and open up for me, and therefore I have to be there absurdly early to be sure. Therefore I get to spend an hour's wait in somebody else's office, which - not having a key - I cannot leave. What do you do, with an hour to kill in someone else's office...?

You take out the laptop, obviously, and finish your chapter. And start the next.

Now on 57K, give or take, and determined to bust 2500 today. That's a blessing. I only have two weeks left to finish this.

Also, so far I've had a horror novel and an SF novel to tute. Tutorialise. Whatever the verb is. This is almost reassuring; I almost feel useful.

And for the last several days I've had The Perfect Image in my head for my own novel, and just today I think I've figured out how to get there, more or less. It's, um, very nasty. Can't wait...

Also, the boys. Obviously a blessing. Obviously. (I have to say that, Baz is right here by the keyboard, supervising. Mac is face-down in the office wastebin. Don't ask me why.)

And because lunch was so very late, it's very nearly time to open the wine already. That's a blessing too. I have deserved it.

A question! On time, and timelines, and dimensionality...

So when I was at school, late sixties/early seventies, I'm not sure we were ever taught it exactly but we did frequently come across the notion that "time is the fourth dimension", to the point where we pretty much accepted that as gospel.

The question is, would someone who was at school in the late twenties/early thirties have met the same notion with the same degree of acceptance or common-knowledge? Whether or not it makes any actual scientific sense at all?