Life Bites Writer On The Bum

I was rather pleased with the blog post I wrote yesterday.  But no one commented on it.  No mentions on Twitter.  No one writing to me.  I felt a bit, well, narked to be honest.  Not that I did anything like stomp around muttering 'no one loves me no one cares why do I bother', I wouldn't do anything as childish as that.  I went about my business hardly checking my email/twitter accounts at all but no one said a sausage.  

Doubt began to creep in.  Perhaps it wasn't as interesting a post as I'd thought.  Perhaps whatever insight I may have had had just run out.  Perhaps everyone had realised I'm just an old fraud.  Perhaps I was simply boring...  I made it to half way through the afternoon before checking the site to see what exactly I'd written. And then I discovered I'd pressed the Save Draft button and not the Publish button.  Durr. My pearls of wisdom hadn't been revealed to the world.

OK, so I'm neurotic (I originally wrote "a bit" but the interests of honesty won out).  But isn't that the way - life lies in wait for the unsuspecting writer until it gets a good chance to leap up and bite us on our bottoms.   

We prepare our work to read out in class, agonising over every adjective, and all anyone talks about is the POV change.  We send our work out, puzzling over how exactly we address Mr/Miss/Mrs/Ms Val or Jo or Robin Whatsit, and forget to include our contact details. We go to a talk about creative writing where the speaker mentions 'beats' and wake up in the middle of the night worrying because we haven't really understood what 'beats' were and whether they're a good thing or a bad thing and do we have them anyway?  

The writer's life proliferates with things to worry, fret and disturb us.  Other writers are successful and serene, they are swans on the water while I play the part of the comedy duckling that waddles along the bank before slipping beak first into a dollop of goose droppings.

But, although my life is littered with me getting agitated about things that have no real relevance, I think I'd rather be like that than super-confident about my writing.  Because then I'd see no reason to improve, there'd be no reason to listen to anyone else.  And I think that's why life really does leap up and bite you on the bum.

Now to press the Publish Post button...

Anyone in St Ives for the September Festival?  I'm giving a talk on Friday 23rd September at 11.00 am.  Go to the website for more info.

Jumping!

So, did jumping work for my crisis of confidence?

Hooray! Yes!

I'm pleased to report that jumping to the bit I fancied writing about worked a treat and I wrote lots. I'm still pretty certain that what I've written so far is way off the mark and is going to need serious work to bring it to anything like publishable standard, but at least I'm writing again and moving forward in the novel instead of sitting slumped in a quivering heap trying to work out what other job I might possibly do.

Before I jumped I rang a friend for a moan, and my wise and lovely friend kindly pointed out that people often had problems writing when they'd run out of things to say. (Luckily they were at the other end of a phone so couldn't see me getting grumpy at the very idea I'd not got anything to say.)

They were, of course, quite right. Thinking about it now - with 2500 words under my belt - I'd run aground on the research detail of the story which I didn't know. My characters are trying to organise an event, and they're going to have to get in touch with the council and get told stuff about planning requirements and health and safety and probably food hygiene laws, none of which I know or have much interest in.

I'd forgotten one of my golden rules - don't write the boring bits. No one wants to know that stuff any more than I do, so I gracefully leapt over it and carried on at the point when I more or less know what happens. At some point I'm going to have to come back and fill in the gap, but for the moment I'm back writing again. It's still not very good, and the beginning is going to have to be re-jigged, but I'm up and running again. Crisis over - for today.

Fancy a holiday in France with me? I'm teaching a week long course on Writing Mainstream Fiction at a fab chateau in the South of France in September. More details? Contact Chateau Ventenac.

Crisis of Confidence

Yesterday I did a really dim thing. I was feeling a bit lost with where to go next on my current novel and thought it would be a bright idea to go over what I've written so far. Now I'm feeling utterly depressed and wishing I did another job - in fact, any other job - other than writing novels.

I'm not looking for sympathy. No, really I'm not. Well, just a bit maybe, but the the real reason I posted is that I think people look at someone like me and think it's easy. I got published relatively quickly and easily, I've stayed published, I've done reasonably well on the sales front. To an outsider it must look easy.

I'm not making any claims that writing novels is hard compared with many, many other people's lives because it simply isn't. But nor is it always easy. I read what I'd written and thought - that's rubbish. It's not good enough. It's not interesting, the main character is a whinger, the secondary characters are cardboard, and there isn't enough action.

What would I tell a student?

1) Never look back until you've finished the first draft. (Yeah, right. Too late.)

2) Everything is fixable. (With time, which I don't have.)

3) You've done it before, you can do it again. (But can I?)

I can hear the negative bit of me grumbling away. The piece of advice I think will work in my case is to jump to a bit I will enjoy writing. Today I shall write a random scene with the sole intention of making me enjoy what I'm doing. Cross fingers it works...

Fancy a holiday in France with me? (Obviously, I'm hoping to be over the crisis of confidence by then so should be better company.) I'm teaching a week long course on Writing Mainstream Fiction at a fab chateau in the South of France in September. More details? Contact Chateau Ventenac.