Have had my head down all day today, planning as well as writing. I find it hard to move between the genres of poetry and fiction in the same day however.

This morning I was thinking about longer short stories – maybe 3 to 5 thousand words and the differences inherent in that form. With a friend I was attempting to put together a time line identifying the gateways that the reader would have  to negotiate as the story developed.

The next step would be to find the beginning of the story. I rarely plan to this extent and it will be interesting to see if it is as effective or, hopefully, more effective, than just plunging in and getting it all down then relying on editing to shape it into its final form.

That brought me to the thorny question of ‘the novel’! it has been written for two years now and despite brilliant input from Adrienne Dines, my mentor extraordinaire, I cannot bring myself to start the rewrite.

I originally set about writing it in my usual verbal diarrhoea style, no planning, just spilling the words on to the page, and consequently it needs a great deal of remodelling. The thing is, mentally,  having written it once, I can’t do it again, and that is what it needs, a complete rehash.

Maybe I should rename the characters, picture them in a new way and then perhaps I will be able to finally put the novel together and move on.

In the meantime, I am one week closer to the poetry collection deadline and no, I haven’t completed the required poem and a half. At best I have two partially fleshed out ideas and several pages of clusters and brain dumps!