Life continues to get in the way of writing. I have been trying to sell my father’s Hyundai Excel Sprint (1995) and the process is a lot more complicated than expected, with road worthy certificates lasting for only 30 days and various problems with selling an unregistered car (if I choose to go that way). My brother has expressed interest in buying it for his sister in law, but his buying price is a bit below the market rate.
I had a new set of lenses, for computer use, placed in spectacles that were for distance use. My old computer glasses were scratched, something I didn’t notice until after my cataract surgery. While at the optometrist, on Tuesday, he pulled out an eyelash that he thought irritated my left eye. For reading he said there was nothing wrong with using the glasses I had. Before I had cataract surgery I was looking at getting stronger glasses for reading, but now I have gone back to one of the weaker pairs. My distance vision is a lot better, everything is a lot clearer and more colorful, so I no longer need distance glasses. Since seeing the optometrist my eyes aren’t as tired and I am not rubbing them as much, so I no longer have my eyes as an excuse for lack of writing.
On Facebook, Ian Nichols wrote: Bob Silverberg managed 20,000 words a day when he was writing lots of pulp novels, but even this achievement is dwarfed by Georges Simenon, who wrote 80 *pages* a day while drifting down the canals of France with his wife and mistress on a canal barge. That makes slackers like me feel very very challenged. At my current rate it would take me about half a year to write 20,000 words. Perhaps I should try the 10,000 words in a day challenge, but just how do I get life to stop intervening during that day?
My father was back to wandering around the nursing home when we last visited him. He still seemed to recognise us though and did tried to communicate. He is on a small dose of morphine for general pain, but the morphine makes him constipated and, from experience with him when he was home, constipation is one of the reasons he doesn’t sleep and constantly wanders. The nurses estimate he has slept for a total of five hours over the past four days. So I expect a phone, at any moment, telling me he has fallen again.
And my weekly look at Kindle’s top 100 bestselling ebooks reveals a trend for less $2 books (21) but more $2.25 to $3.50 books (16) with one for free. I still haven’t got very far into the ebook I downloaded on to Kindle installed on my computer because I find that when I use the computer I tend to be on the web and sometimes writing. Perhaps if Amazon or Apple gave me one of their readers for free I would read more ebooks.
Graham.