Fool, now there’s an interesting word. As a noun, it means a person who lacks judgement or acts unwisely. An idiot, basically. As a verb, it means either to deceive or trick as well as to waste time or act foolishly.

I think I’m guilty of being both the noun and the verb recently.

I’m a fool to myself, speaking of the noun. I keep setting time targets for myself and then broadcasting it either via this blog or Substack. And then I look like a total berk when I don’t make good on those targets.

Take my blog post from the 9^th June. You may recall it; it was titled Switcheroo. It was a well written, little piece that fizzed and zinged with positivity, that I concocted in a mood of joie de vivre. I was feeling triumphant from writing a whole chapter of my next novel in one day and became so full of exuberance that I made all sorts of claims and promises in that post that I was going to get the novel finished in the space of a few weeks.

Foolish of me.

Here we are several weeks later and I’m just on the cusp of finishing chapter 7 of that book. Nowhere near what I had crowed about on June 9^th. Nowhere even remotely near.

Now, I’m not saying that the writing itself has been a struggle as I am convinced that this is going to be one of the best Joe Wilkie books yet and I am enjoying the writing process immensely. I truly am having so much fun with this one.

It’s just that I haven’t gotten all that far with it. Life, as you know, has a habit of getting in the way of things and my life is no exception to the rules. Yes, I could blame poor health, yes I could blame commitments and yes I could blame my own reticence and idleness at times. The stark naked fact is that I simply shouldn’t have made those claims in the first place.

Because now, I look like a fool for saying them.

As a verb, it’s even worse!

I feel like I’ve deceived my readers by making such bold statements. I’ve fooled people into thinking they’re going to be reading Joe’s next adventure in the near future when in reality it might not even be this year.

I mean, I’m doing my best and I’m hopeful it’ll be released before Christmas but the truth is I just can’t promise that and I shouldn’t have given people the wrong idea when I said it would be ready by Autumn.

Ok, it might well be ready by Autumn if I get my foot down but then again it might not. I just can’t say for certain.

And to think, I convinced myself and all of you that I thought it possible that I’d write three chapters a week. I’m a fool whose fooled.

So I’m sorry everyone. I’m not going to make any more bold promises or set myself time-based targets that are just unrealistic and unfeasible. Instead, I’m going to knuckle down and write my ass off as and when I can and instead of focussing on the release date I shall focus on producing the best book that I can. Quality over quantity must now be my mantra when it comes to the daily word count.

I think, as a writer, I should be aiming for more mystique and less foolishness.

Incidentally, a fool is also a kind of pudding. It’s pink, fruity and not very healthy. Now, who does that remind you of?