I have a confession to make. I didn’t write anything new last year. Despite all my intentions, chronicled here in this blog, I do not have a new project. I am not currently writing a novel, and haven’t been for some time. I’ve been working – editing, rewriting, bogging, etc – but I haven’t written anything new for over two years.
Life gets in the way. I have a long list of legitimate excuses, but it doesn’t make me feel any better to repeat them. A writer is someone who writes, and if I’m not doing that, am I still a writer? Ideas and intentions are just not enough.
I do have ideas. There is one in particular, that has been brewing for a few years. Twenty-three years to be precise. I started writing it once, and had big plans for it, but abandoned it in favour of other things. But it was still a good idea and never really went away. Recently, I’ve been jotting down notes on characters and themes. It has a basic story arc and two or three scenes. It has characters that I am interested in getting to know better. The story and setting fit well with my genre preference. In my head, it is my next novel. But it hasn’t gone any further than that. To use an analogy I have described before, it has created a few sparks, but the fire hasn’t caught yet.
Of course, this could be because it’s just not a very exciting story. Maybe I should take this as a message that it’s not worth writing – if it’s boring to write, then it would be boring to read. But I don’t think it is. I’ve heard people refer to a “book hangover”, where a reader can’t start a new novel because they are still too obsessed with the novel they’ve just finished. That is me. I get terrible book hangovers. I’ve never read very much Dickens because I started with Bleak House and liked it so much that all the others are just not the same. And it makes sense that the same applies to writing a novel too. I have been in this situation before; after finishing The Most Beloved Boy, I really struggled to let go and move onto the next project. That was when I used Nano Wrimo to drive me forward and managed to write No Such Cold Thing. But this is the wrong time of year for Nano Wrimo, and I doubt I could fit it in with my new work schedule. However, it has given me an idea, for a new experiment.
To get this new novel going, I need to give fuel to the fire. Notes are not enough. I need to start writing – creating scenes, building back-story, putting words into my characters’ mouths. So I am setting myself a challenge. I will write something every day. Even if it is only a paragraph or two. Even if I’m not in the mood for writing. Even if I need to spend time at the weekends sitting at my desk in front of this lap-top with the Wi-Fi disconnected. Even if I have to use my lunch-breaks to scribble in note-pads. It’s not that difficult; I think it is actually easier to fill a spare thirty minutes with writing than it is to get immersed in reading a novel. And here’s the thing – it won’t matter what I write. It can be absolute rubbish but it will still make excellent kindling, which is what this novel needs. The hope is that if I keep going at this, the fire will take hold and begin to burn properly.
That’s the theory anyway. And here’s the other thing I have learnt about writing – it helps if other people know that you’re doing it, because it provides an incentive to keep going. That’s why I’m writing about it here, making it public; the hope of having a novel in progress is the carrot, but the fear of having to admit defeat is the really big stick. So let’s see, it is now the end of February; I will come back at the end of March and report on the results. Can I force myself to start writing a new novel? We’ll find out in next month.