Writing When Tired

It's January. The house is cold and looks a shambles. I'm commuting 200 miles between Bath and St Ives. I've just started teaching again. I got a flat tyre yesterday. Am I writing? Er....No.

What I want to do in the evenings and at weekends is grab a cup of tea and snuggle down in front of the fire with a re-run of Wycliffe. The last thing I want to do is write. Creativity and tiredness are not easy companions. But. But. But. Tiredness can also be an excuse. Most of us are tired, but if you want to write you have to find the hours when you can.

I had two young children when I wrote my my first novel and to be honest I don't know how I did it. I remember getting up early, staying up late, writing while dishing up supper (watching out for spag bol on the keyboard). I wrote that first draft while my busy life carried on around me. Tired? Yes, of course, but the motivation to write kept me going.

It's always the first ten minutes that are the hardest. Once you're underway, the writing warms up and soon an hour has gone by without you realising it. And by the end of that hour it strikes you that a) you don't feel so tired and b) you feel proud of what you've achieved. You pushed through the tiredness and now have something to show for it. Hooray!

So forget the tiredness: you'll never get anything done if you wait until you feel fully refreshed. Just get on with it - even if it's only for ten minutes - and enjoy the glow of achievement when you've done some writing.

JMW Turner Has Advice For Writers

One day the artist JMW Turner was out sketching.  An admirer offered to buy his sketch which Turner agreed to, saying the price was 60 guineas. 

    '60 Guineas! But it only took you 10 minutes.' 

    'Ah yes,' JMW Turner is supposed to have replied.  '10 minutes, and 40 years of experience.'

I'm dredging my memory of my Art History degree for this anecdote, so it may not be 100% accurate, but it came to mind when I was giving feedback to those 40 first pages a couple of weekends ago.  I've given feedback to so many writers over the past 15 years that it doesn't take much time for me to analyse a text and spot what may be holding the author back.  People sometimes are amazed that it only takes a few minutes for me to see something that they haven't despite hours of slaving away at their work. Well, a) I'm an outsider and b) I've done it before.  10 minutes, and 15 years experience in my case. 

As well as reading other people's work, I've written quite a few words of my own - well over a million I think, given my prediliction for cutting vast chunks out of my early drafts.  The more I write, the easier and quicker it is to write.  Similarly writing this blog.  Posts took ages at the beginning.  Now ideas come often, and take less time to write up.

People sometimes ask me for a possible timescale to publication, and the immediate answer has to be: no one knows.  A deal could turn up tomorrow, or never.  

But I think JMW Turner suggests another answer.  The time it takes will be directly related to the amount of time - writing, reading, giving and getting critiques, researching the publishing business, promoting yourself etc - that you put into it.

Trying to Write

I'm trying to write. Honestly. Which is why I'm in my office sitting at my big computer doing a blog post instead of being in bed with my laptop writing a novel.

I'm trying to write. But I'm not really being honest. If I was, I'd be tapping away on the lap top, and not here. But because I'm 'trying' - trying to lose weight, trying to be honest, trying to get the work done - I'm hoping for a few points for effort. Let me off the hook - I'm trying!

I've heard students say this. 'I tried to get the writing done, honest.' And because I'm a mean, horrid person, I've put a pen down on the table in front of them.

'Try to pick the pen up,' I say gently. They pick the pen up, and I put it back down. 'I didn't ask you pick the pen up, I asked you to try to pick the pen up.' They look puzzled for a few seconds, then get the point. You can't 'try' to pick a pen up, you can only pick the pen up, or leave it.

I'm not trying to write. I'm either writing, or I'm not. End of.

How a Hamster made me a Writer

I like hamsters. They're cute and furry and wash their faces in that sweet curled up paw way. And as a pet for a child they're easy to handle, inexpensive to keep, and don't need much by the way of maintenance. An added bonus is they don't live for ever, unlike rabbits and guinea pigs which can go on for years and years, long after the children have grown out of having small furry pets leaving their mother to look after them. But I digress.

We had a series of hamsters when my children were small. One Saturday morning I was cleaning out the cage, fitting a new rolled up newspaper to the bottom of the cage before putting in fresh bedding. And of course, I was letting myself get sidetracked by reading the paper. It was our local one and the article that caught my eye as I smoothed the paper over the bottom of the cage was about a short story competition. Hamster on my shoulder, we scanned the details. 1000 words max, legal theme, deadline that Monday.

I knew I wanted to write a novel. I'd known it for years, but somehow I never managed to find the time to actually write anything beyond Chapter 1. A novel was an awful lot of writing. On the other hand, 1000 words sounded easy - surely I could do that over the weekend. The only problem was the legal theme, as I knew nothing about the law.

I put the hamster back in its nice clean cage and went off and wrote a short story. It was about 600 words long, about a will and an inheritance, which was the only legal theme I could think of. I had to drive round to the newspaper offices on Monday to deliver it by lunchtime. For the next couple of weeks I eagerly checked the post, but nothing arrived. I forgot all about it.

Then, months later, the letter came - and a cheque. I'd won second prize and £50. Hooray! I ran around the house squeaking, then sat down and set to writing. This was obviously how I was going to make my fortune. I actually - oh the shame - worked out how much money I was going to win from all the short story comps I entered over the next three weeks.

I won nothing. Not a penny. I was obviously not a genius after all. But I had scraped a mention in a long list and that was enough to encourage me. I signed up for a creative writing course...

Who lives near Birmingham? On 23rd June 6.30 - 8.30 Lucy Diamond, Milly Johnson, Veronica Henry and me will be talking about writing at Birmingham Library. Come and meet us!

Even the Smallest Flowers can be Beautiful

Yesterday morning promised to be a good writing opportunity. All household chores had been done, gym was not on the agenda due to cricked wrists, and we were off to lunch elsewhere, to be followed by a dog walk. So there were no excuses for not writing. I sat down and decided - given I had oodles of time - to have a quick look at Twitter. Someone had posted a link to an interesting blog so I read that, and commented. That made me think of an article a friend had written which I hadn't yet read, so I read that on-line, and then another one she'd written for the same publication. And then I read about Scarlett Johannson being in Iron Man, and something about Kate Middleton and cup cakes, all of which I could sort of justify as research because I might try to write for this publication too, and somehow two hours just slipped away.

My lovely writing morning had vanished. I had under an hour left before the real world intruded. It hardly seemed worth opening the new novel file, but I decided not to berate myself for having wasted so much time on surfing, and instead get on with some writing. And then proceeded to have the most useful 45 minutes I've had on this novel. Suddenly the first quarter, which I 've been struggling with these last few months, fell into place. I could see how the scenes were going to work and interlace with each other.

It was good to be reminded that time spent with the novel, even if it isn't the ideal, is never wasted. Any time is better than nothing, and in this case, it was just what was needed. So grab whatever time you can - even ten minutes can make a difference.