Ah me, you live and you learn. Seems I've been underestimating my abilities in the copy delivery department. But the fault's not mine entirely. Something has to be laid down to inexperience. When are those stories going to be ready again?

I thought that story C would be complete by mid-March, just after I take mum to Brisbane for her consultation with the eye doctor. Then I promised story D by the end of March, so giving myself two weeks to achieve the ultimate perfection that I demand from everything I produce.

It's not just that I'm flattering myself. The fact that I've already written most of story D is also due to being unused to the "process" of preparing copy for delivery to the publishing vehicle.

The big stumbling block was always story A, which I finally filed yesterday. After returning from Sydney with a computer stuffed to the screen bezel with interviews - the raw materials of the writer - I sagged for two days to recuperate. Then I went online and, because it was a weekday, got sidetracked by the tweetstream.

The interviews sat, ever more pungent and impatient, waiting to be transcribed.

I got into it, finally, near the end of the week. There followed two days of frenetic activity as I completed story A and knuckled down to complete the transcription for story B, an interview.

I blogged about the ins and outs of transcription yesterday.

Now, A and B have been filed and D - the 600 to 700 story due at the end of March - is almost written. There's still plenty to do with story C, but it looks as though that will be done in plenty of time for a mid-March filing.

Barring another slothful Twitter interlude and cataclysmic tsunamis out of Chile.