Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Progress report - or a bunch of trivia, depending on your point of view

The plum mountain has now been reduced to two bowlsful (I don't think this is a word but it ought to be) on the kitchen table. The plums are no longer pink and yellow, but dark red. Their destination is likely to be another crumble. It's urgent, because they are fast heading for the land that no delicious Victoria plum should ever see - the compost heap.

You know what? I miss custard. It's not worth making it just for me, because I don't like it cold and how could anyone possibly judge the right quantities for one portion? I don't like ready-made.

The sweet peas are still flowering but their stalks are getting shorter and shorter. 

I'm feeling better about my new glasses since my sax teacher said they suited me. They are also so comfortable that I often forget I have them on. (Dave also said they suited me, which was nice as he is always honest, but as he has suspect fashion taste it didn't cheer me up a lot.)

This morning, Dave is working on a stained glass project in the shed, rain is forecast, and I am going to sit at my desk and work out how to get out of the hole I am in with the book. It's short of narrative drive and the solution I started to apply last week has changed the whole nature of it so I need to think again. I had thought of giving up writing forever, but I get too bad tempered when I don't write, so that's really not an option. 

This is the first of my books that is not a comedy and contains only a couple of pages of amusing dialogue. Is this the problem?  Who on earth knows? 

I have revised a book before, but never rewritten one, which is the territory I am in at the moment. It's hell for me, and everyone else as well.


from the brilliant The Unstrung Harp by Edward Gorey
Let me know if you can't read the text and want to. I'll post a close up. 

Over and out.




7 comments:

marmee said...

poor you and mr earbrass!! I do think one of you should make custard and eat a goodly portion and throw the rest on said compost heap and write write with a full tummy and hopeful heart!

Sue Hepworth said...

You are so funny!
I made one last plum crumble for tea and custard too.
No writing done today but a lot of thinking.
Fingers crossed for tomorrow.
🤔

ana said...

Yay for custard ! Hated by my husband
Nothing replaces my mother’s version
Should provide calcium and protein for writerly resolve

Sue Hepworth said...

I LOVE you guys!
❤️❤️❤️

Anonymous said...

I love the trivia, in previous posts in the face of all the terrible things going on in the world - I think you might have said (or quoted) something along the lines of living our lives well, eating plums and the scent of sweet peas is an act of defiance? I had a brief look through your archives but couldn't find it. On the other hand - we are about to have a visit of the Duke of Cambridge to unveil a statue to Frank Foley a British spy who saved thousands of Jewish lives while undercover as a passport officer in Berlin in the late 1930s - I wonder if you are a spy, undercover as a novelist just as Mr Earbrass wished he could?

And custard - this works - I just tried it http://elizabethsvegetariankitchen.blogspot.com/2007/09/egg-custard-for-one.html Jenetta

Sue Hepworth said...

Hi Jenetta, thanks for all your comments. I will try to find the quote you mean. Perhaps it was the Rohinton Mistry one - ‘There’s only one way to defeat the sorrow and sadness of life – with laughter and rejoicing. Bring out the good dishes, put on your good clothes, no sense hoarding them.’
This isn't quite right, but I can't think of another right now.
and the custard! I will check out the link.

Sue Hepworth said...

OOh, ooh, ooh, forgot to say, Jenetta, that I am too much of a blabbermouth to be a spy, but I can totally see Mr Earbrass as one.