I checked my writing productivity spreadsheet and I've not written any new words on any new stories since the week of 18 May when I finished the first draft of Love U More.

That's 10 weeks with no new story words. Sounds like a bit of fail doesn't it? But, conveniently, in the spreadsheet, I also record other writing related words I write, and other writing projects too.

The spreadsheet has one row per week of the year, and across the top I have the following headings:

• stories – this is words I write for my stories
• planning – in case I type any planning notes for stories, usually I hand write planning, plotting, character biogs, and those don't count in the spreadsheet
• other – any other writing words that don't fit into the other categories. For instance I free wrote about 5000 words about my wonderful friend Nick when I returned to my New Forest writing retreat after attending his funeral. I also include reports I write on manuscripts I read as part of the RNA's New Writers Scheme. It's not fiction words, but it's still words related to writing.
• LL blog – words I write for my blog, or any other guest blogs I write really.
• UK Meet – anything I write for UK Meet
• Total – this automatically adds up all the different categories for that week.

In addition at the bottom of each of these columns there's a total so I can see how much I've written in each of these categories at any one point. This automatically adds up during the year as I enter new numbers in each box.

• Notes – this is a reminder of what I wrote that week. I also include notes about any edits I've done that week, which usually doesn't add to the word count, in fact it often means cutting words, but it's still time I've spent on writing projects. It also helps when I look back and wonder why no new words that week and see I did a content edit or a line edit that week instead.
• Target – this is the final column which includes a weekly target number of words, and this increases as the weekly targets multiply by the number of weeks into the year.

So, what *have* I been doing for the past 10 weeks? Well, a quick look through the notes section of the spreadsheet shows I have done:

• some marketing consultancy work for a client – research, interviews, analysis and recommendations
• Heat Wave Astoria content and line edits and proof read – out 8 August from JMS books
• Best Friends Perfect Book 3 content edit and line edit – out in autumn 2015 from Wilde City Press
• The Guardian Angel content edit – out in autumn 2015 from Love Lane Books
• Wrong Room, Right Guy content and line edit / proof read– out 1 August from Manifold Press
• some blogging about the 7/7 London bombings and the Kylie concert I went to
• organising a blog tour for Wrong Room, Right Guy and Heat Wave Astoria, writing guest blog posts
• reading a manuscript and writing a report for a New Writers Scheme submission
• re-reading Christmas Serendipity and plotting a story taking place next Christmas, and another story about the characters' lives between Christmas. The next Christmas story should hopefully be part of a series of short holiday stories from JMS in December 2015.
• applying for something, I can't say more at this stage, but I will share when I can.

How do I feel about all these weeks without writing any new words?

It was only last week, at week 9 when I realised how long it had been. I've enjoyed the other writing related things I've done, I always learn so much from an edit with a new book with a new editor or an editor I'm used to working with. I love how someone can show me something about how to improve my writing I'd never seen before. Same reason why I love beta readers. However, I must admit, I am looking forward to writing some new words on the 3 new stories on the list to be written before the end of 2015. What are these stories? Well, you'll just have to wait as and when I write them, the first thing is working out which three from my long list I'm going to write, and then working out in which order!

Until next time,

Liam Livings xxx

It is ten years today since the London 7/7 bombings.

I watched a wonderful, sensitively done, moving, based on true life drama, called A Song For Jenny. It's based on a book of the same name. It's about a female Vicar's experience of losing her daughter on her way to work in the bomb at Edgeware Road tube station on 7 July 2005. It perfectly shows how those suicide bombers ended the lives of many people they didn't know and therefore affected hundreds and thousands of others with that grief.

I cried, almost non-stop from start to finish. There are some very powerful scenes where she goes to the tube station where the bomb went off. She sees the police photos of her daughter's body. There's a wonderful scene where a taxi driver takes her all the way from Edgeware Road station to her family in Reading. She asked for a taxi to Paddington station, where she could have got a train to Reading, and once the taxi driver hears why she was in London, he says he'll look after her and take her all the way to her destination. He says she probably thinks there aren't many nice people in life, but he wants to show here that's not the case. So beautiful.

On that day, I was 1 month into my first central London job, in Victoria, before that having worked in outer west London / Middlesex, depending on how you view London.

Here's an extract of my diary from that day: [additional comments I've added now in brackets]

Very busy packed journey into work. Piccadilly line is delayed. Feel a bit pissed off – but arrive at 8.40 ok. Then it emerges a bomb has gone off at Liverpool Street. Go into week ahead meeting video conference with Leeds [office] – no one there seems arsed. After the meeting at 10.30 get back and there are reports of bombs at stations all over central London. Not knowing where, I ring BF's office, the phones aren't working as they're overloaded. Start to panic. Ring BF's mobile and he answers, which is such a reassuring feeling. [There was a lot of emotional mobile phone calls in the office that morning as people received calls from family, or called loved ones working in other parts of London]. We are advised to stay in the building, especially as they find two suspect packages at Victoria station.

Sit watching it unfold on the TV in the office. There were bombs on trains at: Edgeware Road, Kings Cross, Aldgate, Liverpool Street, Russell Square and a bus bomb in Russell Square. Initially we [me and the boyf] still plan to meet for a meal then shopping but by 1.00 it's apparent that everyone's leaving by car. Office manager goes around and does a brilliant job at organising shared cabs by geographical location. I leave at 2.30 with Dan, James and this girl Rachel and Jenny. Jenny freaks out and runs back – she's Australian and regretting moving to London. Dan runs back to retrieve her but had lost her.

On the way back we discuss going to The Birdcage [gay pub] together. Dan goes home first as he wants to change. James and I go straight to The Birdcage and start drinking cosmopolitans at 4.00! Dan arrives at 6.00. James and I bonded over eighties music and films, Dan arrived and talked about work and how hard he worked at our conference. We disagreed on unions and lots of other stuff. He likes to go out in the week and be tired at work. MAD. Dan leaves at 7.00. Speak to [my friend] Dean who had his graduation ceremony [for uni] – glad he avoided Bank and Liverpool Street stations. He starts his new job on Monday.

At 7 James's boyf Paul and friend Susan arrive. Susan [is a nurse and] works at University College London Hospital and helped out in today's atrocities. [She didn't want to talk about it, which is why I didn't write anything in my diary. She had a keep calm and carry on attitude to the whole thing which I think is admirable.] Paul is very friendly and they are a lovely couple. Go back to their flat on Chiswick High road. Watch Erasure and Human League music DVDs – a concept I will invest in. Have Nando's food – chicken with chicken! Get very drunk on Pimms with gin...

***

The next day I got right back on the Tube and went to work again. Because you must. You must continue living.

A few weeks later I received an email from a man who was due to meet me and my team in Victoria. He apologised but said he couldn't come to London from somewhere in the Home Counties, since what had happened, he was worried about his safety and he'd be in touch. He said I was so brave for travelling on the Tube in London.

My colleagues and I found it patronising to the highest degree. I, and millions of others weren't brave for travelling on the Tube in London, we had no choice. I lived in London, like 8 million other people and I worked in London like many more. I had to get on with my life.


And I think that's the best two fingers up to the bombers, to continue with your life, to not let their disgusting behaviour affect your life, and how you think about the many millions of other people – of all nationalities and backgrounds – and most of them being good kind people, like the taxi driver.

Spare a thought for all the families affected by losing people in the bombings ten years ago today.

Liam Livings xx

With all the worthy, educational, must watch/read/listen to media out there, (Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, The Wire I'm looking at you) it's sometimes such a blessed relief to find a zirconium jewel of glorious terribleness among all the real rubies. You know, the thing that's so terrible it's brilliant. I suppose it's a variation on the guilty pleasures concept.

Here's a few of mine across various media.

TV – Mistresses, a BBC drama of such glittering glossy twaddle sprawling across 3 series it is hard to resist. Each of the women have multiple affairs, all while in perfect make-up, hair and clothes. There are plenty of 'told you so' and 'oh no you didn't' moments to shout at the TV and watch through fingers hiding the screen full of women bobbing about in a stew of their own anxiety and womanliness. The men are portrayed like sort of background moving wallpaper and are disposed of as and when they're no longer required. Yet, interestingly men forms the basis of most of the women's conversations, since they're all at one point or another cheating on their man, or being the other woman in a man's marriage. As you can imagine I lap up this over the top nonsense in spades.

A recent addition is The Royals – an alternate universe British Royal family where Liz Hurley plays the queen and Joan Collins plays the queen mum. It's like a cross between Made In Chelsea, Footballers Wives and Mistresses. 'Mesmerisingly dreadful' is what the BF proclaimed it after the first episode. So mesmerisingly dreadful we can't wait for the next episode. That's when you know it's so bad it's good. Just saying...

Music – am I going to pick Girls Aloud, no, because NME said they're cool which excludes them from this specific category. Instead, I'm plumping for Enrique Iglesias – Escape. Coming out, as it did, in 2002 at the height of the Ricky Martin, Spanish music influence on everything – see Gerry Haliwell's Mi Chico Latino, it was right on trend. It's over the top, crooning, romantic, and most importantly it is filled with great sing along, foot tapping songs. Of course they're all terrible, but they're so unashamedly terrible, overly earnest and cheesy. They. Are. Terrible. As you can imagine, I enjoy this *a lot*. This CD is often found spinning its merry way when I have the roof down on my convertible sports car. And also when I'm driving alone in the sensible car if I need a bit of a pick-me-up.

Music part 2. Aqua – Aquarius. This is their second album. Yes, there were two albums. This one hasn't got Barbie Girl on it. It's got a more 'grown up' sound to their music, if that's possible with this sort of unashamed manufactured pop music. But if you ignore the lyrics, and I would advise you do very much ignore the lyrics, the songs themselves provide plenty of foot tapping, sing along melody. Its unashamed nonsense and song topics such as Freaky Friday and An Apple A Day make this the epitome of so bad it's good music.

Film. I had to physically restrain myself for this section. I could have written a whole post about only films so bad their good, but that's not for now. Instead I will include a few choice terrible gems. Legally Blonde and Legally Blonde 2. Silly nonsensical romance with a girl who's more clever than you at first think. So many quotable lines. Bend and snap. That is all. I saw the musical stage play of this for a recent-ish birthday. It. Was. Amazing. Next in films is Mannequin. Andrew McCarthy, Kim Cattrall. A shop mannequin that comes to life, a romance, and an amazing eighties sound track, throw in some slightly OTT gay stereotypes from Hollywood the window dresser colleague, and you have it all. It's so so terrible, such unbelievable nonsense it can only be brilliant.

Last but buy no means least, books. Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susanne. It is trash of the highest order. It is so over the top and inescapably addictive in how it's written I could do nothing else but be consumed by its story and read it in a few days. The characters are all a bit broken and a bit wrong in more than a few ways. Hollywood Wives by Jackie Collins. People get very sniffy about Jackie Collins novels. Say what you like but the woman can tell a story. The woman can create characters who are interesting, unusual and keep you turning the pages to see what the hell they do next. This was my first Jackie Collins and I enjoyed the OTT characters, situations and soapy multi character multi layered plot and had to keep reading to find out what happened. It was bad, but it managed to be just the right sort of compulsive, glittering nonsensical bad so it was wonderfully perfect escapist good. And that takes skill to pull off properly. Say what you will about Jackie Collins books but something happens on every page. There's no flicking past pages of description. Oh. No.

What things do you enjoy precisely because they're so bad they're good?

Liam Livings xx