Sunday 16th April 2006

I’ll keep this short because I’ve written more today than I have any other day in my life and another shift would send me loopy. I can’t really focus on the screen as it is.

Essentially, the book’s as good as done. It’s been conquered. I haven’t stuck the flag in yet, but I can claim it as conquered territory. Basically the last few words need to be done (which may amount to three or four pages, it may be three or four paragraphs depending on what I feel’s appropriate) but I didn’t want to do that now – I’d probably make a mess of it because I’m so worn out and besides, I want to celebrate that last word. Not mark the occasion by dragging myself up to bed.

There were two bits to the book that needed doing to finish it today, the Introduction and the final chapter. I’d already started work on the final chapter on Friday, and so that was a prime target, but this morning I switched my sights to another section (for the first time with this project) and wrote the Introduction. This went very smoothly and only took a couple of hours, which was very promising.

The strange thing is, I’m actually nervous about finishing. I almost don’t want to, and at the same time want to finish more than I’ve ever wanted to finish anything. I want to finish this more than a cold cross country run when I was thirteen. Why is writing a book different? When I was doing cross country runs when I was thirteen I wasn’t saying to myself ‘this is horrible and exhausting but secretly I wish it would never stop and I could run this cross country run for ever and ever without ever stopping.’ So why do I feel this way about The Power Of 10?

I started dabbling with the final chapter straight away but it soon became clear what it was going to involve – a mammoth push of about 5,000 words. That’s about as much as I’ve ever managed in a day before. The weather outside was beautiful and so I took a walk to prepare myself, thinking the chapter out in my head. I walked right down to the Pier Head which looked great in the sunshine and then into town. I stopped in at The Lion for a pint but THIS is how dedicated and focused I am, I left it at the one pint, went home, sat down, and wrote like a lunatic.

I did write another five thousand words but as I say, it wasn’t quite enough, and the final bit will have to be tomorrow. But how to mark the ‘end’? Writing the final word? There are still illustrations to draw and scan in. Then it needs checking. Then compiling into a finished… Hmmm. There’s actually about four days left I think. I think I’ll mark the ‘end’ of this first stage by clicking ‘send’ and e-mailing it off.

And now I’m off to bed. I can’t write properly now and all I do write will be dull. You don’t want to hear about the book, I know that.

Do you know, I’ve written so much on this poor little laptop over the past two years that some of the keys have lost their markings and are now blank? Hang on, I’ll take a photo. Where’s that camera?

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