Hiatus

As you'd probably noticed, I've been off. Off from here, I mean. It wasn't intentional, but having reached the end of my intense novel-writing activity - at least until the comments come in from reviewers - I've been kind of regrouping for the last week. Taking some time for new ideas to steep. Reading around the subject. Wondering what to do next. What direction to take.

And, as a result, not writing. Or at least, not blogging. I guess any activity vaguely connected with writing counts as... writing. I could call it research. Or "filling the well." Or thinking.

I remember working with a guy once who spent a lot of time thinking. He would always look as if he wasn't doing anything. He had a rubber (an eraser, I mean) he used to fiddle with. Spin it round in his fingers, nibble little bits of it away with his nails. Or just sit and stare at it. He was designing software. In his head. At the time I thought he was just... well... lazy. Bored. It was a good lesson for me. The absence of any sign of activity does not necessarily mean the lack of activity. Like a duck - there was a lot going on under the surface.

At the end of days of apparent wool-gathering, this guy would turn on his PC and write an entire design from beginning to end that was complete, coherent and almost entirely bug-free. He wasn't an impressive guy to look at or, as I've explained, to watch. Most of the time. But he sure ended up impressing the hell out of me.

So that's where I've been and what I've been doing. Only without the rubber.