First Draft

12th June 2021.

I was awake early, about 5 am no chance of getting back to sleep. My head was full of ideas for the last couple of chapters of my novel.

So I went downstairs, fed the cats, made a cup of tea and sat at my laptop.

I wrote for an hour and a half. Ideas were coming through fast and my characters were alive and here, with me.

Breakfast and then back to bed for an hour before my Saturday morning yoga. Intention set to ‘stay present’, breathing through the movements, mind stilled.

The sun was shining, the sky a deep, bright blue and I needed physical exertion. Benny agreed to come for a bike ride to Ripley and we rewarded ourselves with ice cream. Cherry swirl and lemon curd in crispy cones.

A quick shower, lunch in the garden, research into a new laptop then time to take the boys swimming. Took the chance to sit in the sunshine and read a book while they swam up and down.

Home and walk into town with Tegan to Waterstones; look at books we’ve already read, declare our favourites, too many to choose. Sit by the cenotaph sipping iced coffees, people watching then home.

Jobs to finish….cleaning, tidying and washing, thinking about those final chapters.

Tea time then revision to do with both boys, lots of Maths; Edward knew his algebraic graphs and Benny showed me his number skills.

Children to bed and time to sit back in front of my laptop. I’m looking out of the window as I think and in the garden a pair of tiny hands part some buttercups, I watch entranced as an enormous hedgehog shuffles out; ‘Good Evening Mrs Tiggy-Winkle’.

Final scene, finishing words and identifying a song that fits. Radiohead sing of Fake Plastic Trees in their song about consumerism but it’s the chorus that hooks me. I can’t quite believe that I have done it.

Finally the first draft, enough words on the page, 83,470 to be exact and next stage to edit. Highlighters at the ready.