In brief.

Today's task has been to start work on my study guide essays. These are for an online database leased to schools, colleges and universities, and provide students with information about a variety of texts along with sources of further reading.

I've complete a number of these over the years - they're a reliable source of income from writing - from Fight Club to 'The Yellow Wallpaper' and from Candide to Metamorphosis to A Midsummer Night's Dream.

My current essay is The Stand by Stephen King, and my first job is to write the synopsis of the text. The text itself is over 700 pages long and my job is to summarise all its complexities in about 3500 words. No mean feat!

Writing a synopsis is not something I was ever taught to do, it's not a skill we tend to teach at universities even though we are told we will have to write one of our own book when we are looking for a publisher. It is an interesting process which involves trying to find the through-line in a text and pull out all the strands which make it work, in the smallest number of words possible. It is a really useful way to get to grips with the themes in a book, and works wonders on making your writing concise.

Along with simply regurgitating the story, I try to capture something of the tone of the text being synopsised (is that a word...). The synopsis for Fight Club had short punchy sentences. Slaughterhouse 5 was conversational and fractured. Shakespeare is always a little lyrical and I have to avoid the temptation to write in iambic pentameter.

After the synopsis comes the research, but for the moment, it's back to simplifying the post-apocalyptic world of the superflu.

The next essay is Twelfth Night. Variety is life-spicy indeed.

And so it begins...

With the bank holiday weekend now passed, and the last of the teaching admin sorted for the year, today has been that red-letter day, the writing of the 'To Do' list.

It's quite long and contains a lot of entries which start with the word 'write', its brother 'rewrite', and its cousin 'finish'. As I go through what I want to accomplish over the summer it seems that I have more things to finish off - either by actually writing the remainder of an abandoned work, or by redrafting a first draft - than I actually want to start from scratch. Hopefully, as I work on those older pieces and reconnect with what made me want to start them in the first place, they will inspire other new works.

Among the things to work on are the novel I finished at the beginning of last year but have been unable to work on until now for a variety of reasons. However, in the last weeks, I have found my mind returning to it and starting to work on it without me being conscious of planning to do so.

I also have two plays - one for radio, one for stage - which are only each a quarter finished, but which still run round in my mind from time to time.

Add to this the range of stories, flash fictions and poems which have been written but never sent out and I have more than enough to keep me going.

However, these are not my first priority. I shall be starting with something which is much more like 'work'. I occasionally write study-guides for the EBSCO Literary Contexts database. I have a few of these to write by the end of June, so I shall be starting with these. They will be interspersed with writing my conference paper for the Great Writing conference in Bangor later this month. I'm presenting on my experiences of teaching both life-writing and fiction writing this year and the way the two crossed over, but more on that in a later blog post, I think.

Oh, and the first entry on the 'To Do' list (after the already crossed off 'Write 'to do' list', of course) is 'Write Blog post', so I shall start with the feeling of accomplishment that comes from crossing that one off. Now to start work on all those others.

Marking has come to an end and the long academic summer (longer even for us 'associates') stretches before me. My plan for these light-eveninged days? To write.

I have plans for essays, papers, stories, plays, poems and a novel. Some of it will be new, some re-writing, some working on part-finished projects abandoned some time ago.

The problem with so much time and so many things to work on is finding the motivation to work. So, here is my blog, a way for me to write about my writing - a wonderful diversionary tactic - but also a good way to force myself to write. If others are following what I'm doing then I will feel the need to keep up the work. So, if you feel like watching over my shoulder and providing a silent (or not so silent) monitoring presence to ensure I'm hard at it, then please feel free follow me.

For those of you wondering about the title of the blog. Well, it's a Frank Zappa quote and the title of one of his albums. But, additionally, I also think that blogging about my writing makes an assumption that you will think it's important enough for me to spout on about it. So, if you can forgive my unmitigated audacity, then why not come on this journey with me.

Come on, the engine's running, the tank is full, and the door is unlocked. Open it up and climb in, let's see where this road leads.