Day 30. Reading, writing, finding the entrance to Purgatory

I can't believe it's been thirty days. I've enjoyed it so much, and it's been so marvellously fruitful. Have to admit, I felt a certain pressure to make today really count, as the final day (though I'll cheat and do a summary blog post tomorrow too - I'm going to miss this daily record!)

Worked for the morning and early afternoon on 'All Our Rooms Are Ensuite', taking a real pleasure from seeing it shape up into a more satisfactory form. One thing I've learned this month is to output stories as quickly as possible and then turn to editing - I am far too included to edit as I go, and it just means that it takes longer to get back into actually writing. I also (for once) divided the story and wrote it accordingly. Seems like a continuity no-brainer, but generally I tend to write alla prima, slapping the words down before they dry, in the order they're meant to be read in. So today - wrote the diary entries in the past - all together, in the past tense and the sequences in the present, all together in the present tense. Saving lots of proofing time as I switch tenses!

And now - finished! And a princely 5,270 words to boot. Was going to submit it for the Muffled Screams anthology, but might just save it for The Unheimlich Manoeuvre (substitute story for 'Tracing the Spectre.')

Also snuck in some final photographic site visits to folksy places - the stone circle at Lough Gur, which is allegedly aligned with the moon and not the sun...

And then on to the fabulous lough itself, with its beautiful mirror-like surface, home of many legends and (so the stories go) the portal to Purgatory.

There's even a casual castle hidden away in the background...

And a wedge tomb down the road - sure, why not?...

In all of these Neolithic ramblings I was assisted by my beautiful research assistant Freya...