I want to live where soul meets body**

Dammit.

If I'd thought about this for long enough to realise that I wasn't going to be able to churn out 50,000 words in a couple of hours, then I might not be in this mess.

According to a motivational email that NaNoWriMo sent me today, the second week is the hardest. It's here when your target seems ridiculously far away and your plot seems at its most ridiculous. Apparently it gets easier from here, but that's easy for them to say, right?

Sigh.

I was determined that I wasn't going to let this thing rule my life, but it's slowly taking hold.

The good news is that I think I've worked out how to get out of the rut I think I got myself into over the course of the first 16,000 words or so.

Someone's going to have to die.

I'm sorry to say that Siobhan is going to be kicking the bucket later on this evening. Before I get to 20,000 words, she will have died a slow and lingering death from cancer. It sounds cruel, but I won't be dwelling on her death too much as it's the funeral that I'm really interested in. I think the death of a friend may just be the thing that Jim needs to send his life into a spiral and convince him to get in touch with Ben.

I know. I'm sick.

Actually the idea was one of two things that struck me when I was swimming at the gym this evening. I think the second thought was by far and away the more profound though: I was reflecting on why I had to be sharing my lane with the two fat blokes with straining beer guts, saggy man-breasts and stretch marks (one of them wearing a pair of too-tight speedos with an alarming tuft of hair sprouting from the top). The thought? Why are the girls in their bikinis always swimming in the other lanes?

It's not that I'm a pervert, you understand, it's just that I would far rather be swimming behind the girls than the fat blokes (although, to be fair, there is something amazing about watching a really fat man swimming fast - it's mesmerising).

Is that really so strange?

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** title courtesy of Spin - claiming the prize Aravis won in the bookshelf competition and generously shared with Spin (I haven't forgotten about your CD either Aravis...).

Tomorrow will be a better day Spin.

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This post brought to you by "Road Rage" by Catatonia and "Milk" by the Kings of Leon. Ah, the wonders of shuffle.

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Update 23:24

20,190 words done & Siobhan is dead.....