The first is the easiest, it’s the one you always wanted to make, it contains your most precious rifts; ideas that you’ve cherished for years that now have form.  You love this album.

The second was a mixed bag to produce.  It held onto the themes of the first but didn’t repeat them, it wasn’t a tribute album, and you avoided the risk of the indulgent concept album – indeed you love this as much as you do your firstborn.

Album number three was a difficult child.  She had all the proceeding baggage of one and two but needed to be both fresh and comforting at the same time.  It could expand, but couldn’t really deviate too much lest you lost all that was good about one and two.  She worked hard with these songs, this album was forever in the studio being remixed, but yeah you love this one too. 

Number four is a difficult wayward child.  This wants so very much to be the debut album that it cannot be.  This collection of songs should easily build on what has gone before, the difficult ground has been broken, the hard sweat and toil to create a theme achieved.  It wants to tell the world about the gaps and edits in the albums one to three, it wants to avoid self-indulgence, but it so badly wants to expand the narrative and add depth…  

Yet Thursday’s child she has so very far to go. 

They’re not albums I know, they are books.

My books.

My tales.

I’ve tried to cover some major themes with each book.

Thomas Payne was the fast-paced chase movie about revenge.

Magic was the dark tale of cruelty and love.

Gotham, this is loss, this is suffocation and sadness.

Prison is revenge, it is wrapping three into the fourth, but it isn’t the end.  It is a chase movie about revenge, it is a tale of lost love, it is also so much more.

And maybe that’s the problem.

Maybe pulling all those tales into this one book is the reason I’m struggling to get over this metaphorical hump.

Maybe.

Maybe it’s because I know with this tale the differences between the good guys and the mustachio twirling baddies isn’t so clear cut.

In this book we have good people following the system, doing their lawful job but delivering injustice as they do.

Maybe this is the book the others should have been?

Possibly not.

I’ve broken 50,000 so that must be a good thing.

I know what I want to happen – it is just that perennial problem of a fast mind and slow keys…

Knowing the problem is the first step to finding a solution.

Accepting procrastination is what it is, is indeed another leap towards salvation.

Over analysis has blighted this book.

Maybe I’ll just type away and let the cards fall where they will?

I should.

Wish me luck!

Numbers on their own are meaningless, open to interpretation and sometimes just alien to the original question (42?).

However, this one references The Amy Grace Adventures Volume 4: Prison.

A title that has become more than a little apt over these last few months.

49,462 words in and…

I’ve gone back to page one, improved punctuation, rephrased and titivated where I can, but the number stays stubbornly at forty-nine thousand and change – no real advances.

I’m stuck; yet every re-read leaves me feeling satisfied with my work.

I like the plot.

I like the little surprises in the plot.

I like the theme of complex retribution.

I like the new characters – I still like the old ones.

Yet I’m stuck in the steel town of Pittsburgh.

It’s the 21^st of May 1890, and like Groundhog Day I cannot leave this Wednesday to see the dawn of a new and different Thursday…  

We have so many riches to dine upon.

We have a government agent looking for Amy, and we have Amy looking to kill the government agent.

We have a backdrop of the immensely interesting/tragic/cruel “coal wars” and the killers of Amy’s lost love are the rich industrialists tied up in this rich tapestry.

We even have a fairy.

Yet Amy is till stuck in a stable looking at a dun mare… 

I’ve deleted proceeding paragraphs, but whatever I do I cannot seem to (metaphorically?) get back on the horse.

My only solution seems to be to write chapters in advance of this situation and hope that I can create a union at some point in the future. 

We shall see.

49,462 and counting!

Yeah guilty of something, probably nothing too. 

Words haven’t flowed.

Stories haven’t moved.

Procrastination has been reanointed the undisputed Lord King or everything!

I’ve hidden behind research.

I’ve bluffed with titivation and editing.

I’ve luxuriated in dithering…

Questioning everything isn’t the help it could be.

Self-doubt is a gorilla sized monkey of doubt – and my back aches…

It could be the isolation.

It could be.

It could be so many different things, competing and complimenting each other to stop me typing.

The imagination hasn’t stalled.

It runs in full fettle frustrated at the lack of outlet.

And yet I know all of this.

All of these paths we’ve trodden before.

Not all knowledge is a good thing…

Maybe this public (empty auditorium) flagellation will ease the blockage.

Maybe.

We live in hope.

Whatever you are doing, stay safe and stay sane!