This blog is causing me serious trouble & strife at the moment. Behind the scenes are a load of posts from the time I went missing a couple of months ago (it all started with Italy, I wrote the posts, I just didn’t publish them because I had no pictures, now that I have the pictures it doesn’t seem to want to let me post them). Technology you and I clash horns once again… might have to get Dave to take a look.
Anyway back into the present, the main worry at the moment is unusually not keeping this blog up to date it’s the novel that I promised I’d write for Nanowrimo (more details here http://www.nanowrimo.org if you, havent got the faintest what I’m talking about). So far I have a grand total (that’s unfortunately ALL the words added together) of 3,000, this isn’t what I’d hoped (I’ve got a weekly target of 12,000, but looking back to my university writing days (undergraduate minor in creative writing) I always spent way more time doing the ground work and then zoomed to the finish, so I hoping it’s redeemable). Had time to write last night but wasn’t really in the mood so switched my laptop off and went to bed with hot water bottle. My task this lunchtime was to plot a ‘what happens in which chapter’ plan. I’ve decided against that however, as writing spontaniously was quite fun and gave me an extra character who I hadn’t planned for, but who could end up being quite useful. So spontenaity seems at the moment a very good thing.
The other slight pronlem on my mind which may or may not be affecting my word count/creativity is my ongoing fight with my demons concerning anxiety of influence. As some of you may know my friend Ali published his book The Girl with the Glass Feet a while ago and is now working on his second novel at the moment (his website is here & very pretty http://www.alishaw.co.uk/). I read Glass Feet within a couple of days of getting it & it is just brilliant, Ali has this amazing talent of setting his scenes in such a wonderful way, his language is quite simpy magic (and it’s a good looking book too, I heartily recommend it). But back to my point, its set in a similarly bleak northern landscape to mine and that worries me somewhat, not enough to consider seriously changing my setting but enough for me to feel Ali’s prestigeously talented shadow standing over me as I write. I guess I just keep going? Any advice on tackling this one much appreciated.
I'd definitely keep on going with it! I'm also doing Nanowrimo and know people who are far better writers than I'll ever be, but the thing with writing is that you're probably the only person who could tell whatever story it is you're writing, so it's worthwhile.