I’ve just been watching Mo Farah’s beautiful, beautiful win in the Olympic men’s 10,000 metres. What a race. I could hardly bear to watch those two final laps. I didn’t see how he could possibly hang on to it. Totally awesome.

And in spite of all Olypmic distractions (of which there have been many) I have been working well on the book this week. I’m almost at the end of the second draft of Part One. Things feel like they’re sliding into place – finally, suddenly – and I begin to catch glimpses of what I’ve been struggling to catch hold of this whole past year.

Listening to: Gillian Welch (again).

Currently reading: Doris Lessing, The Memoirs of a Survivor. What an unnervingly strange book that is. I haven’t read Lessing for some years, but it’s hugely instructive to be doing so at the moment. I like the way her thought processes seem to formulate themselves even as she writes. I admire her total disregard for the conventions surrounding how a good novel should behave and be constructed. Lessing’s work seems almost to construct itself as it goes along. It becomes what it needs to be. I would aspire to such courage. Also, it’s fascinating to note how central SF and SFnal ideas have been to Lessing’s career. She’s not afraid to own this, either.

I like.