...or the candle at both ends, if you prefer, but either way - I've done it! Sixty thousand words, approx, and I haven't had so much fun since grandma got her... Although having once put my arm through the wringer, I don't suppose grandma had any fun at all. Not that my own grandmother ever did it, you understand, she being far too proper to venture anywhere near the mangle (or anything else) without full whalebone armour.

But I digress.

I'd given away the idea of writing a novel years ago, but at the beginning of July, for reasons known only to my subconscious, I dragged out a first half-chapter I'd started before I came up here (2002) and away I went. It took me over; got me out of bed in the morning, kept me awake at night and brought me perilously close to  embarrassing blunders when its day of the week and season of the year became more real than reality.

I've never aspired to writing The Great Australian Novel, which is a very good thing because this certainly isn't it. It's slight to the point of vanishment, has a mere nod in the direction of plot, and probably every fault guaranteed to make a self-respecting publisher trash it in the first three pages, but since I can't even imagine trying to get it published, I don't care. When it's polished to my satisfaction, I shall pop it in the filing cabinet to be taken out and patted from time to time, and possibly provide it with a sibling or two if the mood takes me. And when I die, my heirs and assigns can have a glorious bonfire, add the ashes to my urn and hurl the lot into the ocean, where I shall sink the bottom under the weight of unread words, one very happy writer.