The Sun is Shining - And I Should Be Writing

The sun has been shining and I'm by the seaside. The temptation is on these sunny days to give up work and be out there in the sun. After all, we don't always get many sunny days - last year, the weather around April/May was about as good as it ever got.

And then there's the freelance thing. Freelances don't get holiday pay or job security but they do get the perk of organising their working lives - and a perk is to be out and about when the sun shines while the office workers have to peer enviously out of the windows.

The only trouble is, it's very easy to let days slip away. A bit like dieting and giving yourself little treats for being 'good'. Before you know it, every day you get to eat chocolate and you're really not on a diet.

So even though the sun is shining, try to spend some time with your writing every day, even if it's just for ten minutes. Then, when it starts to rain again - as it undoubtedly will - you'll be ready to go.

(BTW that's obviously do as I say, rather than do as I do...)

Annie's Email

This morning I got an email from my sister Annie who lives abroad and is busy writing her second book on gardening. It talked about various family things and finished with the comment: I write a lot of words daily, but not on the book.

Oh, yes, I know that feeling. Each of my blog posts are between 300-500 words, and I've nearly done 200 since I started last year. So roughly that's 80,000 words since October on the blog alone. Then there are emails. Some days are better than others, but I must do at least 10 a day, let's say averaging 100 words although some are much longer, and not many are shorter. That's another 20,000. Then there's Twitter. Okay so it's only 140 characters, but perhaps five times a day? (I may be deluding myself here.) Another couple of thousand for sure.

In other words, I've written enough words for a book since October, though it's not a real book. I've also been writing a real book - a novel - at the same time. I've done quite a few thousand words on that too, but not as many as my blog. If only I'd done the same word count for my book as for my blog...

Perhaps that should be my new resolution. Write as much as you blog and email. Sounds simple, doesn't it?

Irritating Chinese Proverbs

I was moaning to a friend about the WIP, how it was taking me ages to write, how I'd had a good day but the novel didn't seem to be getting any further.

'Ah,' he said, rather smugly I thought. 'You know what they say...'

'Nope,' I replied. 'What?'

'The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.'

This was particularly irritating because I'd said it to him last year about a book he was moaning about and regretting accepting the commission for, and I have a horrible feeling I was very smug at the time too. But the really awful thing is - it's TRUE.

When we set out on a novel we don't always know where we're going, but unless we take that first step we'll never find out. And then take another step, and another. That thousand mile journey is made up of lots of little steps and if we concentrate only on the enormity of the journey we'll never have the courage to take a single step, and we certainly won't enjoy the process.

So there we have it: the 100,000 word novel is one sentence after another. And there's nothing more irritating than having your own advice quoted back to you.