What happened to September?

Actually, I know what happened - I went to Japan! Had such a great holiday visiting my brother and getting far far away from it all.

But writing did happen too - aforementioned brother is such a good writer that I couldn't resist the opportunity to have him help with my book. He looked over sections of the first chapter that I knew were weak but couldn't work out how to improve myself. Thanks to him the whole thing is now more succinct and hopefully sets the scene much better than before. He has experience of writing and re-writing beginnings. It is the trickiest part, I think. Both he and I have found that we needed to return to the start once we'd got to know the characters and the story through writing the rest. Once you've done that you suddenly see all the problems with how you started out. For example, I referred to the reader twice in the first chapter but never after that. Hmm. All sorted now, I hope.

I still need to:
a) go through weaker sections in the rest of the story and apply his excellent advice;
b) write the rest of the dratted thing.

I am aiming to have a fairly clean draft finished by Christmas. Even though I don't strictly fit in, as I have already begun writing, NaNoWriMo through November will be a really good push to get lots more down on the page.

That's all folks!