Moving forward or my great big writing week 3 (28)

Hi all,

I have been busy moving forward with my writing. Last week I finished the second draft of the novella. I plan on moving forward further this week by editing the novella before moving forward to having it critiqued.

The novella moved forward in size by about a 1000 words between drafts. I wish I could borrow some of Tony Abbott's great big bullshit dust while writing. You know the kind of dust that you sprinkle around so that greenhouse gases can be reduced without increasing electricity prices. I could have sprinkled that on my novella and it would have been rewritten without including any additional words. Perhaps if I manage to get some of his great big bullshit dust I could have written the whole story without using words.

I am still yet to move forward on a decision on whether to lock myself into some great big writing sessions at the Melbourne Writer's Festival, which is on at the same time as Aussicon4 in the first week of September. A lot of the authors arriving for Aussiecon are appearing at the writer's festival, like China Melville, Alastair Reynolds and Kim Stanley Robinson. But with the Aussiecon program not out yet, I risk missing a great big something while moving forward and backwards between venues.

Life moved forward in interest at the Clements' household last week. We complained to the council about a recalcitrant next door neighbour who kept on driving over our nature strip to jump start their great big SUV, thus beginning to wear muddy trails in our naturestrip. I had previously gone around to ask the great big owner of the SUV to desist, but he hid around the corner while I talked to his great big wife. I suggested they park the great big SUV around the corner (they have a corner block) where they wouldn't have to drive across anyone else's naturestrip and turn it into the great big mud pile that theirs currently is and we feared ours would soon be. But she said her husband was not going to be moving forward the SUV. So we rang the council. They went around to see the great big neighbours on Wednesday and told them to move the great big SUV because of the great big mud pile or suffer a great big fine. The neighbours moved forward and the great big SUV was moved forward to the side of the house.

But on Friday night our front nature strip was vandalised. A post was removed that had previously stopped then driving with all four wheels across the nature strip and a bottle brush that I planted a few months ago, along with its stakes were gone. So was the letterbox. I called the police and two great big officers came around and then went and visited our great big neighbours. So I might have started a great big war.

Next week I hope to have moved forward from this great big battle, so Bob Brown should be happy.

I plan to apply to become Julia's and Tony's speech writer, as they certainly need new ones. Although it might be hard to replace the mining industry and Rupert Murdoch from their job with Tony: you know that the richer you get, the more you thing you are right.

Graham.