I wish it wasn’t so….

I’m not getting much useful done these days. The thing is, what I should be doing is finish editing my novel “365 days”. This is the novel that I sent to a publisher last September/October, they sent it back but said that they like the story and the characters but that it’s to long in its’ current form – they did however say that they’d want to read it again if I would shorten it down, a lot! And I planned to do this very soon after that, as it turns out, I have a really hard time doing it.

Originally the manuscript was 272 pages, I’ve cut about 30 of those, but since they wanted me to cut a lot I guess that would mean about 60 or 70 pages – and it’s so hard to do it. It’s not like I mean that it’s 100% perfect in its’ current form, it’s not, but it is hard to take things out without destroying the story or disrupting the pace. Another thing is that I am a bit tired of this story at the moment myself. I worked on it for several years, and while I did that, there wasn’t much else that I actually wrote, and it’s like I’m not really ready to do this editing stuff yet, because I don’t feel inspired to do it.

So, now I haven’t done anything with it for several months, and I feel very bad about it, because when I finally find a publisher that kind of likes what I write, I really should try to finish it and get it back to them as soon as possible, and so far I just haven’t been able to do so. I keep thinking about it all the time though, and this disrupts all my other writing, because it’s like I can’t focus on that while I know that this big task still remains to be done, silly I know, but this is how I feel. I do what I need to do to get through my internet course, which is still so great, and which I’d really want to participate in even more than I do – but this “365 days” thing that I should be doing and is not, it’s occupying my brain, it’s the last thing I think about before I go to sleep and the first thing I think about when I wake up – but I still can’t get around to do it.

Yes, I know – I’m a mess! For now anyway, I’ll get through it somehow. I’ve got 2 choices really: either make my peace with the fact that I won’t be able to finish the work on “365 days” now and then put it aside for when I feel inspired to do so – or just somehow force myself to do it even though I hate the thought of it right now, just to prove that I can and then send it back to the publisher and have the problem out of my life, at least for a while.

When I manage to make a choice I’ll tell you all about it!

What I did on my summer vacation – part I

I did survive my one week vacation in Playa Del Ingles this time as well, and as expected we had an excellent time. This should be said though: as it was only 7 weeks since our last trip to Playa Del Ingles, this new trip sort of felt like week 2 of the previous week we spent there – and actually, by the end of this week 2 I was ready to go home. Last time when I left there I was so sad and wanted to stay for longer, this time I felt that 2 weeks is just enough, and I started to long back to my every day life, my own bed and Norwegian food (longing for the last thing; food, this will certainly be interesting when I move to England in September).

All our evenings/nights we spent at Dunes&Tunes, of course, what did you expect? We enjoyed ourselves so much there the last time, that there was no doubt at all where we would hang out at night. There wasn’t however as much people there as it was in April, we were told that this particular week we’d chosen to come back to Gran Canaria is still low season as schools all over Europe still hasn’t gotten as far as to their summer vacations yet. The pub is still great though, and the people who work there are the best!

We actually managed to do a few more things during daytime on this trip than we did on the last. We went shopping in Vecindario (a quite large city a 15 minutes taxi ride from Playa Del Ingles), where there is a kind of large shopping centre, and also the longest shopping street in all of Spain (or so we were told); it’s 4 km long! The shopping centre was nice, and we did walk about 2 of the 4 km of shopping street as well. We didn’t really find anything to buy though, but that’s a different story.

We also visited Maspalomas twice. Maspalomas is just a 3 minutes taxi drive from Playa Del Ingles, and it is also a very touristy area, with lots of hotels, but mostly a lot more expensive than Playa Del Ingles. The shops there were great with lots of nice clothes and stuff, but very very expensive! The second trip there we went with a couple of friends of ours to Holiday world, where we did some bowling and beer drinking, went on a few joyrides – and I had my picture taken together with a couple of parrots! Lots of fun!

This time we also visited Sioux city, which is a fake western town about 10 minutes taxi ride from Playa Del Ingles. I kind of liked the way the town looked, it looked like the ones I’ve seen in western movies and to me that is the real thing. The things they sold there and the shows we saw there were awful though. Truly very bad dancers, and bad acting, and lots of junk for sale; like small plastic figures of bananas having sex!!! It was ok though, and plenty of horses, also for rent for those who would like to go for a ride. We didn’t though, this time.

And we went to the go cart range, to find out that the price was 15 Euros for 8 minutes and we thought that way to expensive so we left rather quickly – and this was when we decided to go to Holiday world instead.

So, I guess this was my vacation to Playa Del Ingles. As I said, an excellent time, but it is good to be home.

Now I’m planning my next trip which will be to England and Chichester by mid July to check out some apartments and hopefully find one to rent. More information on this will, of course, follow!

Listening to....

Since I’ve run out of good ideas of what to post here, I thought I’d just go ahead and share what music files I’ve been downloading from iTunes lately:

Pink – Stupid Girls
Lordi – Hard Rock Hallelujah
Lordi – It snows in hell
Lordi – The night of the loving dead
Sidsel Ben Semmane – Twist of love
Kate Ryan – Je t’adore
Carola – Evighet
Carola – Det regnar i Stockholm
Anna Vissi – Everything
Shakira – Hips don’t lie
Red Hot Chilli Pepper – Dani California
Chicago – You’re the inspiration
Gavin DeGraw – I don’t want to be
Shakespeare’s sister – Stay
Seal – Kiss from a rose
Anastacia & Eros Ramazzoti – I belong to you
No Doubt – Don’t speak

So – this is some of the music I’m listening to these days and that will come with me on my trip to Playa Del Ingles on Friday.