Meanderings.... gin.... a post review glow.... of writing....

You'll have to forgive me for this, I know it's been awhile.

The sad fact of the matter is that I don't have the drive to keep writing here. So many other things are taking my time. I'd love to spend 10 minutes a day, maybe at the end of the day, documenting all the minutiae of Bruton mansions here. But it's not happening, hasn't happened for a long time.

There's many reasons for this. But probably most pertinant amongst those is the sheer amount of time, the sheer amount of writing time my work over at the FPI blog takes up. I get to the end of the night and it's too late to even contemplate writing anything else.

Take September. DC had this new thing where they relaunched every comic with a new number 1. And I decided, in a moment of all too frequent madness, to review all of them. Then, halfway through, I felt guilty at not balancing these DC reviews with some Marvel review. And of course, I had to do the usual reviews of things sent to me for review over at the FPI blog as well.

Which meant in September I reviewed something like 80 works. Now some of these were mere paragraphs. But as anyone doing this sort of thing will tell you, sometimes a paragraph to summarise a work is hell to write. Better occasionally to go to 2000 words than 200.

So I'm exhausted. It's back to school and of course I've picked up some delightful bug or other from the returning children, who seem to spend the entire six week holiday incubating viruses to inflict upon my person in the weeks we come back.

And I'm doing incredible work, review after review after review spews forth. And then I hit a wall.

All it took was one book that I really loved to bring me to a grinding, frustrated halt.

My way of working is a perfectionist's way. I have a rule that says I know I can't get to 100% satisfied with anything, so 95% satisfied is what I aim for. Yet occasionally even this isn't possible, usually with something I really loved, yet somehow can't find the words necessary.

And that's where I've been for the last week. Every night I thought I'd nail it tonight, the words would come, the review must write itself, after all I loved the book, so the words will just flow.

Sadly, not a bit of it. But somewhere in the rational side of the brain,. I've reached an accord. If I can't manage 95%, then maybe, just maybe, 80% will be okay? I think it might, I really do. Which is why I'm here. Right now I'm in that warm glow of post review happiness. Something that's taken a week to write only needs a final edit, a few pics added, and then it's done. Time to turn to the other books on the review shelf. But only after a celebratory G&T, and a sleep.