It's been a few days since I did an entry to this journal. It was a pretty busy weekend and an equally busy Monday. Right now, I don't recall what we were doing all weekend, but it seemed to take up far too much time.

Monday morning was dramatic. Steph has written in her journal about our exciting early-morning dog adventure. Right after that, I had to go to the dentist. Turns out I need to have my wisdom teeth removed as they're pressing against the neighbouring teeth and causing cavities. So I'll then have to get the cavities filled. The dentist kindly put together a treatment plan costing about £400. So, if anyone feels like buying one of my stories now, that would be great...

I didn't get much work done on the novel over the weekend. I revised a short story to send to the Nevarary Alternate History special issue, and another one to send to the next issue of Flytrap, although the latter is still about 100 words too long. Hard to see where I'll cut them, too.

Novel Progress
Not much during the weekend, but on Monday and Tuesday morning I've managed to write Chapter 5 in longhand. I'm not sure how long it'll be, but I'm guessing 8-10 pages, so round about 2,500 words. That would bring the total up to somewhat over 9,000 words, or almost a third of the novel.

I keep shifting events planned for later in the novel up to earlier. Now that I'm so far through, this seems like a good thing, although I was worried about it earlier. The plot is fairly complex, so it'll take a while for everything to play out.

Goals for Tomorrow
Plot Chapter 6.
Try to plot out the structure of the rest of the book. There's too much going on now for me to play it all by ear.
Type Chapter 5.
Start writing Chapter 6.

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It was interesting to see the results of the Iowa caucuses. For my money, as someone who isn't an American citizen and is just watching from afar, Kerry is the worst possible choice for the Democrats. You would have thought they would have learnt a lesson from last time around. You won't beat Bush by choosing a candidate with similar policies. You need to open a wide gap, or people just won't bother to come out and vote.

Funny how the pollsters all got it so wrong, though...