Skip to main content

Mojo matters

I've been quiet for a couple of weeks. During that time, I've been struggling with my writing - and it's difficult to sustain a writing blog when you aren't actually writing.

I've had a short story to do for an anthology that refused to come. I finished the novel I started last year and suspect it needs some space and then more work (the main character's voice doesn't feel strong enough yet). I started and didn't continue with some stuff. And I mused.

Now I am an over-thinker and, when I turn my attention to musing, it can take some time. Thoughts that occurred to me included

I might not have another book on me - and, strangely, I wasn't too concerned at that one. I came to writing to write Abendau and have the bonus of Inish Carraig and Waters and the Wild. If I have no more books out I still succeeded and I'd have no regrets.

I'd take things back to being a hobby - and that has masses of appeal. Fewer hours spent promoting, only taking on things I find fun, no pressure to come up with a book a year, or every 6 months, or whatever.

I could go about things differently in the future. When I had an agent they took me on for Inish Carraig believing it was marketable - and it was. And they pretty well nailed the marketability expectations of all my books to date. So, maybe, the agent route is the way to make this work - by nailing something marketable. In which case the current book isn't the one to do that with, judging by early interest (but it will still come out at some point, I'm sure. I like the book and that's part of this whole paradigm.)

Anyhow as I mused on all this I stopped writing (except the short - should be with the publisher this week) and stopped demanding that I write for writing's sake. I enjoyed my kids, I cooked, I worked hard at the day-job and I waited.

And lo! A new idea emerged. A thriller (so that'll be helpful, a new genre - not!) A plan of approach. Bang on market.

And then the musing disappears out the window as I pick up the pen and write (and I will handwrite first I think - since half my first drafts get deleted anyhow it seems to have little cost to the production process but will enhance the creative process, I think)

Which all means: I think I needed a break. It's hard, sometimes, to recognise this in ourselves but we cannot create indefinitely but give ourselves permission not to.

Comments