Totally Lacking Inspiration

Which is my current state regarding this blog.  When I do talks and people ask 'how do you manage to blog every day?' I always say, 'I don't know; I'm waiting for inspiration to dry up, but it hasn't so far.'  Well, today it has.  

So instead of coming up with some cunning technique about writing craft, or a bit of cheer-leading for the writing process, here I am, tapping away and wondering where on earth I can go next.  I often write like this, particularly when I'm starting a novel.  Off I trot into the blue, fingers moving while my brain is chattering: this is a daft way of making a living.  

And what happens is that, although inspiration may be lacking, somehow the words turn up.  Pages are filled.  Characters do things.  They start interacting.  They begin to be interesting.  Gradually the story draws me in and before I know it, I've written a few thousand words.  And then the next day I do it all over again.

There is a magic in just writing.  You trust that somehow it WILL happen, and off you go.  I see it often in my writing class.  People who have braved my wrath to tell me that they haven't written anything at all that week are told to write.  They bite their pens then, hesitating, start to write.  Then their heads go down and the pens scratch away, and suddenly I'm saying 'ten minutes are up,' and still they write on.  I quite often have to get firm and stop the class, and reluctantly they put down their pens.  

So next time you're not feeling like writing, next time you haven't got any inspiration, next time your pen/keyboard feels as if it's stuck in mud, just get going.  You may find that, through the magic of writing, you've ended up by writing something.  Something, perhaps, like this blog post....