Grant year, week five: research and writing

Kind of hit the wall this week. Well, the first of the many walls 'Skin Deep' is likely to build for me to scale.

A range of factors, some positive and some negative.

The negative: kids not getting to bed 'on time' due mostly to the heat. It probably sounds like a cop-out, but the reality for me is that when the kids don't get off to sleep by 7.30pm or so, me having to go in and tell them to go to sleep, or stressing about when they are going to go to sleep, really drains me psychologically. And so I'm less likely to drag myself to the keyboard.

And the heat itself. I had headaches pretty much all week which, again, aren't conducive to good writing time!

The positive: I did two research sessions with tattooists this week. One with Davin at Brunswick Ink over at the Valley; the other with Matt Cunnington at Westside Tattoo at West End. I got to sit with both artists for over two hours and talk to them about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. Which was invaluable. Much more valuable than reading about tattooing or watching TV shows about tattooing. It was also good to see both ends of the scale. Brunswick Ink is relatively new, whereas Westside Tattoo has been around for ages and has built a really strong reputation.

So, by Friday morning, I had zero words in the can. ZERO! I managed to get 1,500 done that morning before heading over to West End to meet Matt. I got another 1,500 done Friday evening. And then last night I was at my parents place with the kids. I didn't really expect to get any writing done. Then at about 10pm I opened the lappy. I surprised myself by hitting a really strong vein. After half an hour I had a thousand words. I felt like I was on a roll, so I kept going and by 11pm I had another thousand done.

Mission accomplished!

(By the way, I'm not trying to big-note myself regarding this 'feat'. This is very much a 'vomit draft' so will need a fair bit of work to get into shape. But for me, I need to get the words down. I need to feel some sort of progress happening to maintain morale!)

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