They say the pen is mightier than the sword, but would you like to go into battle against a Claymore wielding Scotsman if you were armed with nothing more than a Bic? I suppose you might be able to poke him in the eye with it before he managed to strike.

I seem to be writing my second novel one page at a time. Not through choice; it just seems to be happening that way. I’ve been squeezing in a bit of writing in my lunch break and last thing at night, when all I can manage is a page at most. I’m worried that I’m going to end up with something disjointed. I remember reading J G Ballard’s ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’, which is divided up into short sections. It reads as though he wrote the book, then cut it up into individual paragraphs (this would have been in the days when cut and paste was a literal term) gave each paragraph a title and then re-arranged them in random order. Bearing in mind that Ballard’s books are pretty wacky to start with, the result was bizarre, and difficult to follow. Interesting though the experience was, I don’t really want to emulate it. I keep thinking that I’m going to be able to spend whole mornings, or even whole days writing, but mostly that’s all it is – imaginings. Still, I think I’m making progress all the same. I’m up to nearly 40,000 words at the moment. The two main characters are well established, and I’m busy furnishing their world with subsidiary characters for them to interact with. It’s a bit like playing god now that I come to think about it. What does that say about me?

Alex was the subject of the first book, in which he had a rather difficult time. He gets off to a shaky start in this one too, but things are looking much better for him just at the moment. Not so for the new character, Maya. She doesn’t make things easy for herself. She’s a strange fish (but then she’s a writer, so what should I expect?) I’m enjoying writing for her though. She’s got some odd ideas, she doesn’t behave how you might expect, and she has an unconventional relationship with the truth. I think her heart’s in the right place, but I’m concerned that she might do something unexpected at any moment. So far, the two mains have bounced off one another a couple of times, with less than comfortable results. I like to tell myself that they might end up getting together and living happily, like her out of Jane Austen and that Colin Firth bloke, but I know that would be too dull. The reality is, anything could happen. Watch this space.

Oh my god, he’s got a pen; he’s got a pen..!