Immersion - and things you sometimes see from your writing desk IV

I wanted to show you the view from my writing desk in Wales, as it's a view which this week has been central to my psyche, apart of course from the scenarios of the novel. However, the mobile broadband signal isn't good enough for pics this morning (I think it must the wind, and not the clouds, as I've thought previously: there's no cloud down on the mountain), so I'll describe it instead: there are ash trees, and beyond them the blue-and-purple of Nantlle Ridge. I've been working really hard - not steadily as I intended, because it's really taken me over, and I need to take advantage of that. I've been writing in the mornings, typing up and editing the morning's writing in the afternoons, sometimes until six or seven o'clock in the evenings, by which time I have been exhausted and badly in need of just getting up from the chair. As a result, I've been out of touch with blogging and the internet generally, although every day I have (unrealistically) intended not to be...

The new typing chair has been great, though: I would never have managed such long hours without a lot more stiffness and RSI with the old Victorian chair...

Yesterday evening I finally got to the end of the first section of the book, and this morning, for the first time since I got here last Sunday, I am able to sit back and take stock and turn my attention for a moment to other things.

The days have been hot, apparently (though not nearly as hot up here on the mountain as I understand it is in England), but it's cool inside the house where I'm working. On one of the warmer days the swallows were teaching their young to fly right past the window, and one baby almost flew into the glass just as I looked up, only to realise its mistake just in time, which felt like some of the moves I was making with my narrative. Often when I look up I see goldfinch and yellowhammers and linnets flitting in the nearest tree. For the whole time a cuckoo has been calling, which puts paid to my long-term idea that cuckoos only call for the month of May, and for some reason I have found that really heartening: I love the idea of having one's longtime assumptions overturned, and I think the sense of that has been especially good for the novel. By the time I have emerged in the evenings it's become fairly nippy, one evening so cold that I wore three tops including a woolly jumper without getting too warm and could have done with gloves, even though John and I had a strenuous walk up the side of a mountain. This is a wonderful time of the year for writing, because it means that you can work for such long hours yet still have long light evenings for walking, which you really need to do, I think, when you've been static all day - and of course, it stays lighter longer here than in Manchester, being further west.

In the evenings too I have been reading Nuala Ni Chonchuir's really lovely novel, You, which she will be touring around the blogosphere from 7th July, stopping by here on the 14th. Usually when I'm writing so hard I find it very difficult to read - it's the disruptive wrench into another psyche and another language - but Nuala's book is so engaging and moving I'm having no trouble at all, and I'm really looking forward to talking to her about it on the tour.

We'll be here until Monday, and on the way back we'll be stopping off in Chester for the launch of Clare Dudman's new novel, A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees, which I'm also really looking forward to reading - and speaking of launches, I'm especially sorry to miss Charles Lambert's London launch next weekend for his new book from Picador, Any Human Face.

And by the time we leave I hope to be well into the second section of my novel...