Me and my shadow and other observations.

I seem to have a writing tic of having characters with silent sidekicks -- the lieutenant's ghost in Living with Ghosts and now a small steppe pony in Grass King. I really don't know why I do this: it;s hardly practical and leads to festoons of post-its reading things like 'remember the ghost/horse' all over the place. And I've done it for years. Somewhere I have a (really bad) short story about Richard III with a ghost and at least one unfinished and unfinishable novel with a familiar spirit.
And it's off-balancing. The lieutenant's ghost was bad enough (I had an awful moment when I received my copies of the published book that I'd forgotten to include it in one important scene -- luckily, I hadn't, I just didn't remember that). The horse is worse. It has to be fed. And watered. And got into boats. Waaah.

And I realised something else, too. For the last I forget-how-many years (something like 15) I've been fiddling with, rewriting and retuning LWG. Now I can't. It's set. Just as it is.... Oh, help!