Mug

OK, so it's Day 4 of The New Book, and things aren't going well. I may have rather rashly thrown the figure of 4000 words at Eva for the little counter thing, but it's miserably obvious that about 3768 of those will have to be re-written at some point, and therefore don't really count at all. In fact, by actually needing to be written again they probably count the other way. I am the only failed romantic novelist in Blogland with a negative score on my word-countometer.

Anyway, all is not entirely lost because I think I've worked out why.

I haven't been drinking my tea out of my Lucky Writing Mug.

When I did my O Levels I had a tiny lucky doll thing, that I crammed into the little zip-up pocket of my deeply unflattering school-regulation purse-belt. She came with me (although thankfully the purse-belt didn't) through A levels and university too, and is now enjoying retirement in the back of my underwear drawer.

These days I have a lucky mug. It's an Emma Bridgewater one with a picture of a cupcake on the front and little iced gems inside. And once, in the picture accompanying an article on the brilliantly funny and fabulous author Raffaella Barker I saw the exact same mug on her desk. So I know it works.

I guess, scientifically speaking, it would be kind of tricky to actually prove that the choice of drinking vessel has a direct correlation to the amount of words per hour and the literary merit of those words, but who needs science? In the sad, desperate world of the aspiring romantic novelist the Lucky Mug Theory is a no-brainer.

Just watch that word counter and see if I'm right.