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....

Learning from an Olympian

A lovely, long boozy lunch on Sunday at a friend's house. My host happens to have won a Gold Medal at the Olympics for rowing. He doesn't usually talk about it, but this Sunday he told us about the experience.

Throughout the heats the Russians were obviously the leading team - they won everything with plenty to spare. So when it came to the final, my friend's team had nothing to lose and catching up, he explained, was easier than being ahead. They got to the half way point, realised that they were in second place, upped the pace and overtook the Russian team, going on to win by a length. Hooray!

It sounds straightforward, almost easy. Yet he had spent many mornings throughout the winter months for years beforehand practicing his rowing before he got a place on the team. He told me that when you're out there and it's cold and miserable and raining ice water and your body aches, a voice in your head is saying: Why are you doing this? You could be in the warmth, you could be in bed. You don't have to do this. But he kept plugging away, doggedly rowing before going to work. It's in your head, he told us. If you win in your head, you win.

The same as writing? You sit at the keyboard typing away, while a voice in your head tells you it's worthless, you'll never get published, you're just wasting your time, no one will ever want to read it. And yet you keep on. Because writing is what it's about. Writing, and more writing, and more writing. You have to put the hours in with no guarantee of reward.

The voice is quite right: you don't have to do this. But if you win in your head, you will win.

PS An Olympic gold medal is smaller than I expected, and less shiny. But, boy, is it heavy!

Inspiration

What shall I write about today? I've not got a clue - inspiration has definitely left me. The blank post awaits my typing but I have nothing to say. There must be a million posts out there which start in pretty much the same way, a zillion newspaper and magazine articles. There are probably quite a few novels that begin like this - and an awful lot more that begin the first draft in the same way.

We have to write something, anything, to fill the blank page, and yet our fingers either lie idle or our thoughts stray into solipsism as we busily examine our empty navels.

On a weekly basis I subject my students to the same terrible situation. Write about this, I command, write about that. Their faces stare at me blankly.

'How long have we got?' one might ask, playing for time.

'8 minutes and 35 seconds,' I say brightly. 'Off you go.'

And off they go. Everybody writes something. It might not be long, or original or particularly inspired, but written it is. I want to say that again: EVERYBODY writes something. My students are a talented and lovely lot, but they are ordinary people. When put under pressure, they can always write.

We need to do that to ourselves sometimes. Turn up at the blank page and demand that you write something. It doesn't matter what, just get it down. Inspiration is as much about turning up as it is about good ideas.

Nothing Succeeds Like Success

I'm having a brilliant writing splurge. 3000 words on Saturday, 5000 - yes, 5000 - on Sunday, 4000 on Monday. And it's got me all fired up to write more, more, more. How different it was only a few weeks ago when even the thought of writing was something to be avoided. Writing? What's that? Nothing to do with me, that's for sure.

But now - now I am writing personified. I LOVE being a writer.

And all because it's going well. I'm pretty certain it will fade - I have been in love with writing before; I know I have a fickle heart and can fall out of love quite easily - but at the moment, nothing will part me from my beloved.

And it's going so well because I wrote what I thought was going to be a tricky scene, and it seemed to work. Which inspired me to write the next scene, and the scene after that. Wheee! I was off.

It's vital to have success in our writing to inspire us. Success could come from ourselves - that tricky scene that just wrote itself - or from outside - a word of praise from a writing friend, a mention in a short story competition. It doesn't matter where or who it comes from, so long as we make sure the opportunities for success are built into our writing process.

The two easiest ways of building opportunities for success are to set writing targets and share our work with others. They have to be realistic - a 500 daily word count, not 5000 - or positive feedback in class rather than 4 agents vying for our manuscript. (Not to say that these things won't happen to you, but they're rare rather than regular events.)

Whatever your writing process, make sure you have those successes built in to encourage on the way.