Vancouver’s glorious summer continues which means our apartment continues to try to roast us alive.

Yesterday was the last day of my four day “writing weekend” and despite the heat I managed to get almost two thousand words added to The Ghost Smuggler and complete the second exercise for the brevity workshop.

It was tough going though. Even my usual trick of sitting in the bedroom with my Chromebook didn’t help for long. I managed to make it to 4:30 but then gave up and went and bought far too many Angry Robot books (21 to be exact).

Overall, my writing weekend was a success, despite the heat, and I ended up writing a total of 7,688 words. For a lot of people that’s not particularly impressive but for me, that’s good. I’m usually looking to average 500 words a day when I’m training for a marathon.

Friday’s day off also helped me set a new weekly record last week – 8,871 words. That’s just over 2,500 words more than my previous best and it’s really down to how much I’ve been focusing on my writing recently. I’ve got my writing head on at the moment and more and more I’m choosing to sit down with my laptop rather than socialising or “relaxing” in front of the TV. Thankfully, my wife is ridiculously supportive and puts up with me ignoring her for hours on end.

Today, it’s back to my day job. That’s going to be tough.

[“Fevered. Feeling hot, hot, hot” by Philip Harris first appeared on Solitary Mindset on 6th August 2013]