Update and poetry

I'm still working on the novel. The second draft is now done, so it is, in effect, complete (the first draft tends to be plot, fun conversations, and a lot of place-holder notes such as 'insert awful date scene' here). I'm currently going over it in a printed version with a red pen, picking up my own awful use of language and grammar and changing all the names where I forgot what someone were called half way through the thing.


I'm suffering a huge crises of confidence over it. 


Having spent every weekend and evening hammering away at it since October, I've emerged, blinking, into the sunlight, and everything I hear or see or read has me howling 'I'll never be as good as this! I might as well just give up now and bury myself in the ivy leaves in the back garden! It's all I'm good for!'


The main thing for now is to just keep going with it. Well, I think so, anyhow; I don't have a vast amount of experience to fall back on.


Anyhow, this is my state of mind at the moment. This is probably why I randomly chose to write a poem for the first time since.... well, probably since my late teens anyhow.


Do you see how I'm already giving myself excuses in case it's really crap?


Yeah, I'm definitely in a teenage poetry kind of mood.

Winter’s day

Cold forages at my feet.

It creeps up my trouser legs

Licking at my ankles

With its icy tongue.

The pavement sparkles under my feet.

My breath steams

And in my mind

I’m an ancient dragon

Waking confused, bleary, hungry,

A pressing need for food and warmth.

My car coughs and snarls into life

Mauling the silence of the street,

Together we speed off into the day.

Grey desks, grey words.

A sudden laugh,

The dragon soars.

It’s over

The evening comes and I head back into the cold.

Pip xxx