Well it’s about time.

I’ve just finished a first-draft of a new DaisyDonnie story; story 5 of book 3.

It’s an idea I’ve had for some time, and I’ve finally worked-out how to assemble the ideas into a coherent whole.

It’s an odd story, one which could be interpreted as disjointed (and which will be helped by future edits).

The muse is back finally; thanks to a much calmer, relaxed atmosphere here at home.

Yes, I missed Bikram tonight, but I got some stuff done which I needed desparately to finish. Tomorrow a double. Easy.

I’ve got at least 5 more stories to write for book 2, and a dozen for book 3, but it could very well be a rush of writing over the next few weeks. I may have the same writers-block that Douglas Adams suffered from; hugely productive bouts of extreme creativity followed by dead-zones of silence.

The mind works strangely, and the ideas don’t come if you force them. They have to come naturally and in their own time.

Interestingly enough, I find the music of Muse gets my mind working, but it is quite frantic music and so the writing that comes out seems energised. I should listen to some Barry Adamson too (just bought his new album off of iTunes so should get it onto the iPod and take it to work…)

However, that’s something for tomorrow. It’s 9.30 and time for bed. Especially since I need to be up at 5.30 at the latest for Bikram. Hey ho…

I’m officially weird.

Being ADD, it means I spend much of my life totally bored off of my nut. It’s a bit of an issue when you’re being paid by the hour.

Then, when the pressure’s on, you can perform feats of productivity the likes of which even god has never seen (10 points for the first person to recognise where I got that quote).

Take today.

I spent the hours between 10 and 4 bored and doing odd bits of work, being just as productive as many… then I got a deadline… impossible actually. I had to document something I hadn’t even seen, on an application that didn’t work with the particular functionality. And I had to do it by 5.30 (when I wanted to leave for Bikram); they needed the material for training tomorrow.

“Leave it to me,” I said.

I zipped over to the appropriate people, asked nicely (but not too nicely) for help getting access to the functionality. A couple of mis-fires, and I had it on my desktop.

Then I clicked into high-gear, creating 5 Wiki pages in the space of an hour.

To put this into perspective, the generally accepted norm for documenting a piece of UI functionality is about an hour a window or function.

I actually missed my Bikram deadline, but only because I decided to document the last window while on the high. I can do a double tomorrow (I’ve got a stack of things I want to do tonight anyway).

And you know, I’ve been told in the past not to rush things. A former employer took me aside once and said “You know that job I gave you, it should have taken you the rest of the afternoon. You’ve got to slow down.”

I didn’t say anything to that, but felt oddly put-down. I can’t help the speed I can get things done, and when I go, I go properly. If I know how to do something, I can do it very, very efficiently.

Take my time at a former employer – the ex tech-writer took 18 months to create a manual. I wrote a manual on an application (albeit somewhat simpler, but nonetheless complex in what I laughingly call UI design) in 2 weeks; 3 with corrections and reviews.

They liked me, but not enough to pay me what I was worth. I left that job feeling totally unappreciated and — in some ways — betrayed.

And here I am again, getting-off (though not in a rude way) on the adrenaline of a deadline.

Potentially this is another reason why I felt so awful when I lost the job earlier in the month. I was gearing-up for the work, I’d worked-out how to do it, how long it would take and planned it out in my head (which I find interesting and engaging), then they started screwing around and eventually said they didn’t want to work with me.

I took it personally. Something I’ve really got to stop.

There was a point to this blog entry, but it has temporarily escaped the chronicler’s mind.

Oh,  I’m a yellow apparently, and I rock and am amazing, or so say the two people who desparately needed the material. So that’s nice to know

Initially I despaired when I heard about this movie… but now I’m looking at it as an opportunity.

Its similarities — including a roving assassin, hunting people with the particular talent — are a bit close to my book The Grand Adventures of DaisyDonnie… (a first-draft story from book 2 is available here) .

However, as I say, as an opportunity it’s not so bad; if it does well then it might be that it’ll make publishing DaisyDonnie a smidgeon easier.

Course, I’ve got to actually get the manuscript to a publisher!

Hey ho…

Funny the things that occur to you when you’re in that meditative zone while evacuating the bowels.

I’ve heard it said by several friends that the Doctor as played by Christopher Eccleston wasn’t nearly as Zany or fun as David Tennant’s.

Eccleston has been described as much darker, moodier… nastier in places, and it’s demonstrated several times, when he refers to humans as “stupid apes”, when he is ruthless in his punishment of the Dalek, unrepentant when Cassandra dries to the point where she is ripped apart… and then so very desparate to help the Gelth.

I feel that all this tracks back to his loss of his planet and his friends and family in the Time War. He’s mentally scarred from this; and I’d suggest that the first new series of Doctor Who occurs very close to the initial conclusion of this war. In the first episode, he is checking-out his appearance, indicating he may just have regenerated from his previous incarnation, played by Paul McGann.

As a shellshocked and perhaps even depressed individual, his forced humour at times and absolute fury makes so much more sense, and it shows what a good actor Ecclestone actually is.

Tennant’s doctor, on the other hand has some distance — notalot to be honest, but some — from the events of the Time War, and so is a little lighter (but no-less ruthless — as evidenced when he massacres the Racnoss young in Runaway Bride). Hence he is somewhat lighter and can be zanier. This is as much to the writers credit as to the actor playing the character.