When I started
(re-started, actually) this blog, it was going to be all about writing. I was
going to write about historical settings, research, the locations around London
that I'd been to and written about. It was going to be all big and clever, and
I was feeling ever so smug about it. Then the novel I had pinned my hopes on
was ditched. Firstly by Lovely Agent (who was not so lovely for a brief moment,
I can tell you) and then, after much soul searching, by me. It was definitely
the right thing to do, and my research and trudging will probably come in handy
one day.
And then I started
blogging about being ill, which I hadn't intended to do at all. But it seemed
like the right thing to do, the thing I wanted to say, and I bunged a bit of
writing stuff in as well. But this is not a blog with which to purge my soul,
nor is it a blog for talking about cancer all the time. Yes, it's part of me and my
life, but it's not everything.
And now? Now I feel
like a bit of a fraud writing the blog. I'm writing it as a writer, but at the
moment I feel anything but. I have an idea for a new novel. I have a plot. I
even have a sub-plot. I have characters. I have settings. I have character sketches.
I have character interviews. I have a synopsis (of sorts). I have a chapter
plan (ditto). But I have hardly any words. I turn the computer on, I open
Scrivener, and I look at the screen. It's not blank. There are 72 words on the
page. But that's it. I like this story. I like the protagonist. Yet I just
can't get going. Surely writers write. So why can't I do it? Is it because I
don't yet have Beckett's (aka Ben Barnes) voice? In my heart I know that by
writing the damned thing, his voice will come. Did I spend too long on the
ditched story, so that I can't wipe the characters from my subconscious? Was the
ditched story it? Will I ever write
another one?
Or maybe I should
just Get On With It. If anyone has an anti-procrastination mallet, please can
they come over and whack me on the head with it? It may well be just what I
need.
