Force
Did you know that the most important thing about being a writer was writing?
I know. It’s stupid, isn’t it? A no-brainer, right? Unless you’re me, of course.
I never thought much about the importance of sitting down and making those words come out. Working at it. But it stands to reason, doesn’t it? Like any other discipline - athletes, football players, singers - you need to practice your ass off before you’re anywhere near good. Natural talents aside, if you don’t use it, you lose it. End of. So all the times I was struggling to find the opportunity to sit down and launch myself back into Charlie and Will’s world, I was simply making it harder on myself. Forcing myself to write everyday - whether it be editing, proofing or committing new scenes to paper - that’s what makes the difference. By not turning on the radio coming home from work, using the dead time to consider the next section, work through dialogue, poke my progress for holes and inconsistencies - that’s what helps. It keeps me motivated and interested. And if time won’t find me, then I have to find it, don’t I?
Why didn’t this occur to me before?
Posted on 13th January, 2008 at 6:47 pm | Comment (0)
Fool
NaNoWriMo just depresses me. It serves as a painful reminder that my dreams are not unique and that are hundreds of thousands of people more dedicated than I am, more talented than I am.
The older I get, the worse my writing becomes - as though any latent talent I may have once had has all but dried up. It’s singularly the most frustrating thing in my life. I have so many stories to tell but I just can’t get them out - there’s a fundamental flaw in the mind-to-page process that I can’t repair, and my thoughts are not so much lost in translation as brutally bludgeoned to death by a talentless hack.
There are millions of people all over the world trying to write a book and I’m fooling myself if I think I have anything special. It’s been twenty years: I need to let this stupid fucking dream go.
Posted on 10th November, 2007 at 7:00 pm | Comment (0)
Gutted
I wasn’t shortlisted. Not a surprise, but a tad disappointing nonetheless.
Posted on 19th September, 2007 at 6:53 pm | Comment (0)
Submit
It was rushed and not nearly as polished as I’d like, but right at the last moment - and after convincing myself that it wasn’t worth it - I decided to submit to that competition after all. A first chapter and (very poor - not written one before) synopsis left my Outbox less than an hour ago, and in the dying hour of a three-month campaign to push this competition. Nothing like making it hard for myself at the 11th hour.
Think big for me!
Posted on 31st May, 2007 at 10:42 pm | Comment (0)
Plan
Way back when the internet was a couple of super computers connected by a tin-can telephone, I remember wondering how in the hell writers properly researched for their novels. I was young and self-conscious and couldn’t, not for one moment, envisage calling someone up cold and asking them for a chat in the name of ‘research’. Just the thought of it made my toes curl up and fall off.
Things have come a long way. I no longer sit with a huge, beaten Thesaurus by the side of my crap old typewriter for I can now locate that word I can’t quite grasp at the touch of a button. I can write about surgical procedures with (some) confidence thanks to amazing online tutoring sites and write in detail about places I have never seen. I, quite literally, have the world at my fingertips. Writing fiction has never been easier.
But with every silver lining there’s that big fuck-off cloud, too. I still can’t believe how many other would-be writers are out there. I spent ten years thinking that I was a complete freak and not for one moment thought that I was simply one of thousands - maybe even millions. I now realise that I’m not as unique as I’d thought and instead of feeling relieved that I’m not alone, all it does is make me frustrated. I don’t need more competition. Writing is the only thing that I know I do well and the thought of pitting myself against those thousands of others turns me green. But if I don’t do something about it, a would-be writer is all I’ll ever fucking be. No-one’s going to discover my worlds and fall in love with my characters if they never escape the prison of my bloody flashpen.
So. A plan.
For the first time in my life, I’m going to enter a writing competition. The prize - your novel published and a literary agent at your side - is so beyond my reach it’s laughable, so it’s not that that I’m striving for. If nothing else comes of it, it’ll be me finding the strength to make a submission to a Real! Life! Agent! for my chosen genre. It’ll mean that I’ll have to be ruthless with my own work and look at my output more critically. A few weeks preparation for a competition that I don’t have a hope of winning will still yield more careful consideration of my own work than I’ve done in years. That in itself is a prize. So that is what I will do.
Posted on 20th February, 2007 at 8:03 pm | Comment (0)