{"id":170,"date":"2004-09-26T05:11:00","date_gmt":"2004-09-26T11:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/?p=170"},"modified":"2004-09-26T05:11:00","modified_gmt":"2004-09-26T11:11:00","slug":"my-flat-cresta-17","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/my-flat-cresta-17\/","title":{"rendered":"My Flat, Cresta"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2 class=\"date-header\">Sunday, September 26, 2004<\/h2>\n<p><i>Service: * * * 1\/2<br \/>\n<br \/>    Food: * * * *<br \/>\n<br \/>   Ambience: * * * * *<br \/>\n<br \/>   Babe Count: N\/A<\/i><\/p>\n<p>Ayeeeeeee! I&#8217;m torn! Should I be updating my website? Or should I be completing the second draft of my novel? Website? Novel? Website? Novel.<\/p>\n<p>Right. I&#8217;m a writer! So&#8230; PROCRASTINATION       RULES!!!!!!!! Yeah!!!!<\/p>\n<p>Okay then. So&#8230; should I be updating my website?       Or tidying my bedroom? Website? Tidying?<\/p>\n<p>Yeah. This could go on allllll       night. And frequently does.<\/p>\n<p>Lemme tell you a bit about my novel. I last worked on it in at the end of March 2001. Three years ago. At that point, I&#8217;d reached 10 000 words of the second draft rewrite. And then hit a wall and ran out of steam. I was awarded a fairly huge grant by the National Arts Council in 2000 or 1999 &#8212; I don&#8217;t recall &#8212; to finish the damned thing. And I&#8217;ve been feeling guilty ever since that I haven&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mysite.mweb.co.za\/residents\/rb000004\/2004-9-25_Smiler.jpg?resize=200%2C266\" alt=\"Just a picture of a babe I came across on the web. Thought she'd make a good portrait subject. Drawing is a very effective procrastination tool if you're a novelist.\" align=\"left\" border=\"0\" height=\"266\" hspace=\"6\" vspace=\"6\" width=\"200\" \/>So now, with the Jacana\/European Union novel competition looming, I figure, hey, why don&#8217;t I blow the dust off the old draft, and wield the old typewriter-calloused fingers, and whip out a new draft. <\/p>\n<p>So, yesterday morning I started playing writer writer. I put my cd player on random repeat mode, and got myself into a frenzy. And nope&#8230; I didn&#8217;t procrastinate. Not much. Maybe five or six masturbation sessions at the MOST! All right. Maybe seven. And a bit of catching up on email. And three backgammon matches against my Jellyfish software.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that I&#8217;m now 31 499 words into the new draft. That puts me just under halfway through!!! I reckon I&#8217;ve got about 12 to 24 hours more work on the thing, and it&#8217;ll be in shape to send to the competition. I&#8217;m working fiendishly fast, and, sitting here, I&#8217;m truly mystified as to why it&#8217;s taken me this long to do something SO basic.<\/p>\n<p>The book&#8217;s called TATTOOS ARE FOREVER, and it&#8217;s about a twelve year old orphan who&#8217;s in love with his foster sister and at war with his foster mother. <\/p>\n<p>Can&#8217;t say more right now. That&#8217;s because my supper&#8217;s waiting. Spar roasted chicken, cold, served with freshly microwaved sweetcorn, steaming on the cob. Served with a smile.<\/p>\n<p>Right. Time to carry on working on the novel. Let&#8217;s see. I need       some Vaseline and tissues.       <\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\">Roy Blumenthal is a writer, director, artist, and <a href=\"http:\/\/snipurl.com\/visualfacilitator\">visual facilitator<\/a>. Hire him to make pictures of your meetings or workshops.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sunday, September 26, 2004 Service: * * * 1\/2 Food: * * * * Ambience: * * * * * Babe Count: N\/A Ayeeeeeee! I&#8217;m torn! Should I be updating my website? Or should I be completing the second draft &hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more\"> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/my-flat-cresta-17\/\"> <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">My Flat, Cresta<\/span> Read More &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p521FP-2K","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/royblumenthal.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}