In an attempt to improve my productivity writing the book, I have been devoting more time to it. In addition to 30 minutes of writing every morning, I set a few whole days to work on it too. Keeping the productivity high for sustained periods is not easy, so I set myself mini-targets to aim for each day - for example, yesterday I wanted to finish chapter seven (the last chapter of part one) so that I could print it out and proof read it. That meant writing around 1,500 words, which is not a bad average rate. 

Unfortunately, when I printed it out and started to read the prologue, I hated it. By now, however, I've become accustomed to this. It seems quite normal to loathe your own work, and if I'm going to finish the book then I near to be thick-skinned enough to get on with rewriting and improving whatever isn't good enough.

It's been said that all writing is terrible, but only terrible writing that actually gets finished can ever be published.

Besides, I'm much happier with how the first section of the book now develops in terms of plot, putting the love story at the centre and de-emphasising the wine content. As that has changed, one of the characters has morphed from a young blogger into an old journalist - which is a much more suitable fit for what the story needs. I also changed his name to make it suit the new characterisation, which really helped to clarify what sort of person he is.

For similar reasons, I'd like to change the name of my main protagonist, Chloe. I like the name, but it's a bit too exotic and glamorous for her personality - but I haven't yet come up with an alternative yet. It needs to be more plain, yet not too common or unmemorable.

My main objective for this month is to keep my momentum going. Now that I've completed 21k words of the rewrite, I should be able to work out how long the rest will take me, and draw up a timetable accordingly.

Based on a rough calculation, I won't finish the book until February 2019 - almost four years after I started. And then will come yet another round of rewrites ...