WordPress is a rotten conscience. Or a very good one, depending on your perspective. Log on after an absence and it will cheerfully announce just how long you’ve been away. A year, to the day, apparently. I’m sorry? A year?
And what can I say about the 365 days that have passed? Another year where one book doesn’t get completed and yet another project gets started in a flurry of enthusiasm only to disappear into the ‘too-damn-hard-to-finish-and-put-out-there basket. I find it hard not to be hard on myself. ‘Be gentle,’ I tell myself, ‘all in its own good time.’ But I’m not sure I believe my own crap.
One of the things that I love about writing is that you can do it mostly anywhere – that sits well with my nomadic soul. I have written chapters (longhand in a notebook) standing up on the Tube, on my iPad on buses, in cafe’s in many a foreign city and this is being written on a train to Brighton, UK. Yet, I recognise that moving home five times in the last year has definitely impacted the rhythm of my writing. Read any advice to writers and most (except, perhaps Cheryl Strayed, who totally advocates binge-writing) insists you write every day, ideally at the same time and probably at 4 or 5am. This, I admit, is not something I have yet achieved. I stay up too late and I like my sleep too much. Oh yes, and I now have a full time, ‘permanent’ job again – for the first time in many, many years, which crowds into my free time like an over-demanding child.
We’re nearing Brighton. I’m not going to let perfection stand in the way of getting the words out there and have another year go by without publishing. Lucy’s story has progressed, as has the non-fiction book so I’m going to cut myself some slack and say, ‘it’s all heading in the right direction.’
That has to be a start, surely?
© itshelsbels March 2018
Writing about writing a book 