It occurs to me that I should update my journal. Not because I have anything illuminating to say, you understand, just because everyone else keeps doing theirs and I don't want to feel left out. Humans are such pack animals.

I've been dithering on the writing front since I finished my novel. I spent a significant amount of time doing background reading for a short story I'm going to write, so much so that I've lost the impetus to actually write the damned thing. So I've set it aside and returned to all the stories that have the first page completed only, to see if any of them want to go anywhere. Eventually, I've settled on one, and we'll see how it's feeling.

I've also written a prologue to a new adult fantasy novel. I have only the vaguest idea of what is going to happen in it, but that's okay. I often work this way. I need a kind of anchor to chain my thoughts to. With a novel, this is often the prologue. With a short story, it's the first page. Then I let it sit for a while (week/month/year/etc) until more ideas have got chained to the anchor (bear with me as I stretch the metaphorical anchor) and coalesced into some kind of functioning boat. Then I can write.

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We've been suffering cafe trauma recently. Their stereo system appears to be malfunctioning and we don't get music in the upstairs area. It's disconcerting. I need those songs, dreadful though they are, to get into morning writing mode. Today's writing advice: make sure you make as unlikely and as inflexible a writing routine as you possibly can. That way, you will have all sorts of excuses for not actually achieving anything. Such as not hearing certain obscure musical tracks that you don't particularly like.