I've seen lots of London in the last two days. I unfortunately have blisters on the back of my heels from the day I got soaked in Oxford, but otherwise this walking tour is awesome. I have seen many neat places this way.
Tonight we walked into Islington and I giggled. The husband asked why, and I said that that I had just one literary association with Islington: the telephone number of a flat, where Arthur Dent met a very nice girl whom he totally failed to get off with. We then found an Italian restaurant that had good food but horrible service, in contrast with the Italian restaurant we ate at a few days ago, which had merely okay food but endearingly crankily good service.
Then we trudged back to the hotel, where we sat in the bar with our Powerbooks and worked on projects and drank. I had some whisky. I figure that will either kill all the germs lurking in my sore throat, or make me really amazingly sick tomorrow.
And, finally reaching an item that you are interested in, dear readers, I also got a really good start on writing the Giles-meets-Holmes story. I did the first Giles journal section, and have made excellent headway on the first Watson journal section. This is the section that has the set piece where Holmes examines Giles and makes deductions about him, so it's the one that intimidates me the most. I'm just plowing on through it, though. My Conan Doyle imitation needs a little work, but that's okay.
Write a first draft. Don't worry if the first draft sucks or not. It probably does. That's the job of a first draft: to suck. You can make it better later. Don't panic! Just keep writing.
