The great plan I had on using focus to predict tone... just flopped. Doesn't work on noisy data. Fcuk. (Good thing I can rely on my dad to censor this before it gets to my mum.) This throws a wrench into my thesis plans - fortunately, there's Plan B. And C. And D. And E and F will return soon from their honeymoon.

Having finished and enjoyed Going Postal and Thud! recently, I went to the Lspace site, and read some of the Master's Words. Terry's got some good points... in answer to one question about whether his stint in journalism helped him write, he says


"Yes, Dave Gemmell and Neil Gaiman were both journalists. So was Bob Shaw. So was I. It's good training because:

1) any tendency to writers' block is burned out of you within a few weeks of starting work by unsympathetic news editors;

2) you very quickly learn the direct link between writing and eating;

3) you pick up a style of sorts;

4) you get to hang around in interesting places;

5) you learn to take editing in your stride, and tend to be reliable about deadlines;

6) you end up with an ability to think at the keyboard and reduce the world to yourself and the work in hand -- you have to do this to survive in a world of ringing telephones and shouting sub-editors.

None of this makes you talented or good, but it does help you make the best of what you've got."


He also goes on (backwards in time) to say

For more than three years I wrote more than 400 words every day. I mean, every calendar day. If for some reason, in those pre-portable days, I couldn't get to a keyboard, I wrote hard the previous night and caught up the following day, and if it ever seemed that it was easy to do the average I upped the average. I also did a hell of a lot of editing afterwards but the point was there was something there to edit. I had a more than full-time job as well. I hate to say this, but most of the successful (well, okay... rich) authors I know seem to put 'application' around the top of the list of How-to-do-its. Tough but true."

"Application? Well, it means... application. The single-minded ability to knuckle down and get on with it, as they say in Unseen University library."

Alright, I'm starting to write my thesis today. (Once I phone home.)

PS: I'm thinking of calling myself Beel.

Short for Beelzebub.

Just to friends, though.