Monday 25 February 2008

Can anyone smell gas?

There's been a slight smell of gas outside the house for a while, ok, make that a year or so. I finally pick a day I can be here and phone the emergency number. Half an hour later a guy turns up, finds the leak in the rusty pipe outside and calls a crew. All very efficient.

An hour later they've removed the pipe, dug some substancial holes and are calling for more help. So now I've got 6 workmen and a drive full of equipment. A few rounds of tea and coffee later and I notice one of the holes now contains a man in breathing apparatus and the man wrestling with the meter under the stairs is firing up a blow torch! At least it confirmed the smoke alarm was working.

The up side to all this, apart from not getting blown up due to gas leak, was meant to be a day where I would write, edit etc. I've spent most of today confined to the one room that was sufficiently air tight not to fill with either gas or smoke. Whilst I have done some editing it still doesn't seem to be very much. I think I'm getting lost in the scale of editing the whole thing. A large part of the editing is re-ordering bits that are in the wrong place. Even though it's on paper I'm finding it overwhelming to move around.

So now I have a plan. No, not a cunning plan. I'm going to write a single line summary of each scene and then I'll have everything in a few pages. I may even go crazy with a few numbers and coloured stickers. It might take a while but I think it will help get me out of this phase of getting nothing done.

I hear the blow torch again. These people know what they're doing right?

4 comments:

Lane Mathias said...

Good job you called them! Horrible mess but the alternative many have been a bit messier:-(

I know what you mean about editing. I've been a bit overwhelmed by the scale of the task lately. I'd sort of hoped it would mean crossing a few words out here and there and adjusting a few sentences. Wrong!! It's a huge, full scale rewrite which is proving very confusing. Time to crack open the Post-Its I think:-)

Good luck with yours. Hope you got some done amidst the smoke and dust.

Anonymous said...

Happy Mothers Day. First time Ive been online for 2 days!!

Annieye said...

I sympathise. I find editing tedious and not very enjoyable.

This is as opposed to re-writing though. I quite like that - taking a chapter and shaping and crafting until I'm happy with it.

With editing you sort of feel obliged to check all the grammar and punctuation and timelines and stuff.

And isn't it odd how you can set aside some time for writing and then other things just shove in and push the writing to one side!

Anonymous said...

Thanks for your good wishes Denise! X