Murder Most Horrid

Well, I have been writing pretty much all day so far, with periodic breaks for tea, soup and toast, jogging on the spot in an effort to avoid deep vein thrombosis, glances out the window at the hens and the snow and the ominous clouds and the snow, and the snow and the snow, and chewing the edge of my woolly shawl in ponderous thought, and checking my email and the blog of a friend in South-West France who is currently tolerating some pretty scary and fearsome looking flooding on her smallholding and I am concerned that she and her hubbie and their assorted menagerie are going to become a modern-day Noah's Ark.

Anyway, in between all that I have been writing. You see, I started a story a couple of weeks ago. It heaved its way to around 800 miserly words, then ground to a halt. I was a bit annoyed because when the thought for the story materialised I was very excited about it, which is usually a sign for it being a go-er. But it turned out it wasn't, and I got tense with it, hence the dive into the knitting displacement activity.

And then, in the early hours of this morning, when I was suffering the effects of too much potato consumption over the weekend, I suddenly had another idea involving the main character from the story, but putting her in a different situation and killing off her irritating niece who was buttering her up for a pair of £200 designer jeans. And so far this change has resulted in the banging out of nearly 4,000 words!

Now, you might think I should be rightly pleased with this progress, and I am but the problem is that I think this character is turning into a murderess. Yes, indeed. Minerva Thing (for that is her name) might, just might, have murdered her brother. I don't know yet. I hadn't intended for him to be murdered. He is dead, because he tried to retrieve a tobacco tin from a road and got hit in the head by a passing car, but then, as the story unfolded, it suddenly became clear to me during the post-mortem, that he, Clive, might have sustained a fatal injury BEFORE he got hit by the car. Of course, 'twas the car wot did for 'im to your casual bystander, BUT I think there may have been something suspicious occurring beforehand.

I had reached the point where Min has just broken down the door to his study (she is a substantial character - no messing with Minerva Thing) and I don't know what she is going to find. I had to stop and do some medical research into subarachnoid haemorrhage, its causes and effects, and my research has brought me very much to the conclusion that there is more to the death of Clive Thing than would first appear.

Well, Min is waiting for the decorators to arrive. Not sure how she is going to explain the broken study door to them, or to DS Phillips who is going to make a visit around tea time.

But then that's the fun thing about writing - you never know quite where it's going to take you!