Book progress according to Me

The book is starting to move along nicely now I'm past the whole process of picking apart the last third, and the way to the end appears mostly clear. There's some ideas floating around in my head for the third book, but like I mentioned before, some of these might not necessarily tie into the shape of the final book, and I might even end up writing some short stories if the ideas don't make it into that third manuscript. 'Might'.

I remember travelling once to Edinburgh in the company of a flatmate to hear John Irving, author of The World According to Garp, do a reading and talk. This was about ten years ago. Being generally regarded as a 'literary' writer, he had to bear the burden of an audience that counted amongst its numbers a very few who had a somewhat flowery notion of the writing process.

A little old lady - well, she might have been only in her fifties or even younger, but she was dressed conservatively in a style that in my mind immediately suggested both 'little old lady' and the phenomenon known amongst the Glasgow writers as the '"nice cup of tea" writing circle' - stood and asked Irving if, when writing, he laughed or cried at his words as he wrote them, presumably from being overcome by the sheer emotive impact of his own language.

I winced. A stony-faced Irving replied, 'Miss, I neither laugh nor cry when I write. I'm too busy working.' Or at least, that's how I remember it.

Well, I just laughed at something I wrote, so clearly I'm now far too poncy to be allowed to live. Mind you, it was a torture scene, so maybe I should be worried for other reasons.