Chocolate before breakfast - the novel

On Sunday, 19 May 2002 at 10:46:12 PM I started writing a novel. The working title was "Chocolate Before Breakfast". Working on the advice that you write about what you know, it's about a smart-mouthed girl with red hair who eats a lot of chocolate and likes to muck around with computers. Not autobiographical at all.

Over the next three years I added bits to it, rewrote others, went to some writing courses, and if anyone asked (and even if they didn't) I'd say "Oh yes, I'm writing a book".

I still thought I was writing that book until I dug it out over Easter and discovered it was five years since I last wrote a word.

And yes, Chapter One still needs rewriting, but it's not too bad after that. Maybe there should be a "Note from Author:" on the back page saying "If you can just get through Chapter One, this book is ok". I wonder if that would help it sell.

Anyway, what I found most interesting was discovering how much of what I'd written had become outdated in the five or more years since I last dabbled.
Of course when you're writing about technology that's always going to be a problem and I'll now have to go back and replace e-mail, e-government and e-commerce with iPhones, iPods and iPads.
I also mentioned items currently in the news: priests behaving badly, asylum seekers in detention centres and the hole in the ozone layer over the South Pole.

And now, in 2010, two of those items are still very much in the news, but concern about the ozone layer has now been replaced by concern about climate change. Five years ago people were only just starting to talk about that and George Bush and Johnny Howard were telling us there wasn't a problem.

Turns out the problem was with George and Johnny.

So, on the off-chance that it's going to be at least another five years before I finish this book, I'm going to have to either be a lot less specific about any references I make, or hope that I can forecast the future.

I wonder what will be in the news in 2015?