3 Writing Monsters That Aren't Just for Halloween

Don't letcha Evil Bonnie getcha!

Since it's Halloween, I thought I might take the opportunity to discuss... the evil monsters lurking in the dark of the writer's mind. Because, since they're not limited to showing up only when the trick-or-treaters come round, they can be a lot more destructive a lot more of the time.

All writers have 'em. Yep, even the likes of Stephen King (and we're not talking the kind he likes to write about.) They can be habits that drag us into a rut, they can be destructive self-beliefs that are hard to shake off or they can be the damning voices of criticism from our own Inner Grinches. All of them can bring writing sessions to a screaming halt - sometimes for days or even weeks at a time. They're often the real reason behind Writer's Block, that phenomenon that may or may not exist depending on which side of the fence you stand on. 

Me, I got flippin' loads of 'em. This is why I've never even considered auditioning for The X Factor or Britain's Got Talent (I mean, apart from the fact I'd probably be laughed off the stage - and not in a good way.) Those same bugaboos that hit me in the writing doldrums would have an absolute field day if I ever decided to stand in front of Lord Cowell and his Big Red Buzzer. 

Well, they say the best way to deal with your inner fears is to face them head-on. And what better way to do that than list three of the biggies on a blog page and make them all terrifyingly public, eh? Hey - I'm doing it so you don't have to (unless of course you want to, in which case, come join the party! I got cake!) Let's do this...

1 - I cannot write unless The Muse is In The House

That feeling of sitting in front of a blank page when the brain-champagne just isn''t flowing is a soul-crushing one, I know. When this happens, writers are faced with a stark choice. They can either:

A) - continue sitting in front of that page and filling it with whatever crap they can pull out of their head - knowing, with every word, that it is pure, steaming crap and they're probably going to junk the whole lot when they read it back tomorrow...

B) - or they can say "the time is not right. I'm not in a Creative Frame of Mind today, so it's pointless for me to strain my poor artist's brain in this barbaric manner. I shall come back tomorrow, renewed and refreshed."

B is what happens when the writer believes that their creativity comes from some 'other' place, outside of them but channelled directly into their brain when the stars have aligned and their creative brain is most receptive to these psychic messages from the imaginosphere. Which sounds very lovely and spiritual on paper... but kind of makes your creativity a jailer and you its prisoner. If you have to wait for your Muse to show up before you can start writing... well, what happens if he's a massive tool who suddenly decides he doesn't want to hang out with you any more? How hard are you prepared to grovel, beg, offer up sacrifices to him in a desperate bid to persuade him to keep shaking his magic booty for you?

Don't let your creativity be the boss of you - you gotta be the boss. That's why A is most often the better option, even if it's the more painful one. Because even the worst writing in the world can be made better, and even if it really, truly can't... you've still done your mental push-ups for the day. Think of it in the way an athlete might think of training for a marathon. He might go out to run on a day when it's hacking down with rain, so he gets wet and cold and miserable, and then a bunch of kids laugh at him and call him a loser, and then some arsehole in a range rover ploughs through a puddle and tsunamis him, and then some little old lady's dog snaps at his ankles as he sloshes past...

Does he think the whole session was an utter waste of time when he gets home, simply because he was miserable for nine-tenths of it? No. He put the time in and worked his muscles. And your creativity is a muscle too. Use it or become the writerly equivalent of Homer Simpson.

2 - I cannot write if I don't have my [insert Special Thing here.]

I'll come clean - I am soooo guilty of this one. With me, it's Special Candles, Special Music and chocolate (all chocolate is special by default.) My candles must be scented - but they must be the right kind of scented; foody-type scented like Honey and Vanilla rather than Toilet-Duck-type scented like Midnight Rain (who decides what 'midnight rain' smells like anyway? Do they have the meteorological qualifications to make that call?) The Special Music must be instrumental (lyrics are too distracting) and atmospheric but not too spiritually uplifting (in case I get too lost in it and forget I'm supposed to actually be writing stuff.) Oh, and it also has to be only just loud enough for me to hear; not loud enough to distract me but also not so quiet I can't hear it over the other distractions I'm trying to distract myself from with my Special Music. Chocolate just has to... be chocolate.

If I have all three of these Special Things going on for my writing session - man, I am going to kick ass! I will be totally in the zone and everything that flies out of my brain will be solid gold keepers, for sure. Except of course when it isn't - but that's okay, because I don't remember those times anyway because selective dissociation... however, I do remember every single time where I didn't have my Special Things and my writing suffered as a direct result of that...

It's all tosh, of course. Breathing in nice smells, chillaxing to mood music and shovelling chocolate in my face definitely improve my mood - but do they really have a magical mojo effect on my writing? Even now, my heart wants to say yes, but my brain has got her sensible pants on and says no, of course they don't. I've written some pretty good stuff without all that palaver going on, and, if I'm honest with myself, I also know I've written the equivalent of steaming horse-dump while high as a kite on my Special Things triad.

And Special Things come in all sorts of guises. Some people feel they can only concentrate on their writing when the house is tranquil and close to silent - i.e. spouse and child-free. Others need their 'proper writing space,' with a big desk and all their equipment within an arm's reach. Nice if you can get it, obviously - but real life isn't always that obliging. And many successful authors didn't get those kind of optimal environments until after they hit paydirt - which means they must have first spent an awful lot of time putting up with less-than-ideal conditions and carrying on writing anyway...

Special Things are nice to have... as a little treat. They're even good for motivation when you really don't feel like writing ("just write for an hour and you can have that luvverly chocolate bar that's siren-calling you from the fridge!") But letting them become the equivalent of your lucky rabbit's foot ("I can't write without it - it brings me luck!") is, like the Muse above, just another way of making some otherworldly thing responsible for your creativity rather than owning it yourself. You make the magic happen, not your talismans. If background noise distracts you, wear headphones (fun fact: even if you don't even listen to anything through those headphones, just the feeling of having something blocking your ears can be enough to 'cancel out' background distractions.) Try writing something away from your writing space, even if that means doing it the Stone Age way with a pen and notebook. Embrace the power of adaptivity!

3 - This book/I will never be good enough, and I'm too deluded to see how terrible it really is/I really am.

I saved the worst for last. You're welcome. It's that feeling, when you're squirreling away at your latest w-i-p, that comes over you in a flash and sucks the love right out of you - "Why the heck am I still bothering with this? No-one's going to read it, and if they do they're going to hate it... why did I ever imagine this was something anyone would want to read? Everyone's going to tell me I suck and I should never write another thing ever again, not even a shopping list..."

It's your Inner Grinch, popping up to mess with your head. His official job is to make sure you never settle for half-assedness (or at least, that's what he'll tell you if you ask him) but he often goes a bit overboard, because, well, he's a bit of a dick like that. And you take everything he says to heart, because you do actually care about your writing and you really don't want to inflict donkey-barf on your reading public... and props to you for that, because it's the right attitude to have. But you're probably judging yourself way too harshly.

Want proof? Allow me to introduce you to... the world of e-book self-publishing!

Now don't get me wrong. There are some fabulous e-books out there where the authors went completely indie and did it all themselves, from writing the thing in the first place to designing the cover, compiling the whole thing into e-book format, self-publishing it through one of the many digital options available now (Amazon, Smashwords, CreateSpace et al) and all their own marketing. Indeed, I've read and loved quite a few that are of a quality easily equal to anything published by the Big Six.

But... I've also seen a metric tonne of self-published e-books of woeful quality (thank the stars for Amazon's 'Look Inside!' feature, which must surely have saved millions from making the mistake of actually parting with money for those atrocities.) And by woeful quality I don't mean I just didn't dig the story, or the author's 'voice,' or the subject matter they were writing about. I mean they were badly written at even a basic, technical level. Littered with typos and spelling and grammar errors, sometimes to the point of wondering whether what you're reading is actually in English. Characters changing the spelling of their names, their hair and eye colours and even their genders - sometimes in the space of a single paragraph - not as part of the plot but simply because the author wasn't paying attention and couldn't even be arsed to do the most basic of proof-reads before hitting 'publish.'

Obviously no book will please all of the people all of the time. I recently read a brilliant self-published sci-fi e-novel about a same-sex relationship between a civilian man and a cyborg-soldier who deserts to live a normal life with his lover, and while I loved it I can imagine how hard it would have been for that author to persuade any of the Big Six to even consider it for publication, because, sooo not mainstream, y'know? On the other hand, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series has been hugely successful, gaining millions of adoring fans... but I would rather watch paint dry than read any more of it than I tried to, not because of any perception about the writing quality but because it's just not my thing.

But, even when you encounter the badly-proof-read, shoddily-cobbled-together messes I mentioned previously, a quick look at the accompanying figures show that some people out there in cyberspace are actually buying - and, presumably reading - even these books. Of course, it's highly likely it's the last book they ever read by that author in most cases, but still... it begs the question: how confident of their writing abilities must those authors have been that they would have slapped up the first draft of their novel for public consumption without even bothering to read it through for mistakes? "Pfffft, nooo, I don't need to check it, I'm frickin' George R.R. Tolkien, I am!"

If you're doubting your own writing skills, and worrying that you're not 'good enough' to publish anything... chances are pretty damn solid that you're already a lot better than those jokers. And some folks out there have actually bought their books. A few might even have... actually liked them - enough to look past the structural and technical car-crashes because they just really dug the story that author was (albeit cack-handedly) trying to tell. Let's be realistic here, those numbers will be teeny-tiny and there aint no way in hell those 'authors' are gonna make any kind of proper living out of their writing unless they pull their socks up. But one thing you can't argue with: they didn't let their self-doubts stop them from putting their work out there for people to see, Why then, as someone who does care enough about the quality of their work to want it to be the best it can be, should you?

Yeah... not everyone's going to love your stuff. And, certainly to start with, you're going to be writing stuff that... isn't that good. (Trust me, when you re-read some things you wrote ten years ago that you thought were fab at the time it can be a cringeworthy experience - been there, done that, worn the *embarrassedface.*) But that's why we keep writing; to learn from what we did before and get better and better. This isn't like The Hunger Games - it's not 'kill or be killed' every time you write something you want others to see. It's a series of stepping stones to where you want to be. Occasionally you'll slip off and get an icy, dunked ass. But that's when you get back up and carry on, because the stones will still be there.

What are YOUR Writing monsters? 

How Chasing The Muse Can Sometimes Scare Him Away

In my previous post I talked about how my word count for Redemption had plummeted in the last few weeks or so. You may remember that one of the reasons I put forward for this happening was that I'd got too deeply into Editor Mode, which wasn't the right one to be in considering I was still doing a lot of restructuring of the plot. I still feel that's the problem, but I decided to go deeper and try to work out what made me free-wheel down that particular one-way street in the first place. And, after a great deal of thinking (and the odd portion of medicinal chocolate) I've uncovered some interesting evidence.

I'm still excited about this story. It still feels like the one I'm meant to write before I try and write anything else, so it's not that the fire's burned out and I'm subconsciously hankering to do something else instead. I know the story I want to tell now, inside-out and backwards - heck, I've even abandoned my pantsing tendencies and outlined the thing - so I can't use the old 'I don't know where I'm supposed to go from here' chestnut either. For the first half of Draft Two I was chugging along nicely, so whatever's dragged me down to a snail's pace has happened only in the last couple of months. Hmmm.... what have I changed about my writing routine in that time?

And that's when it hit me. Quite a few things, actually.

When you want to write the best book you possibly can, you look for ways to help you do that. Ways to help you first find your Muse, and then chase him down and hold him like a hostage to your writerly bosom. You want his mojo raining down on you whenever it's Writing Time. And so, if you discover suggestions for helping you do that, you grab them and give 'em a whirl. I grabbed a few in the last couple of months, courtesy of a myriad of Writer's How-To books. I lurve those books. I gobble them up and swallow them down like a big blue whale hoovering krill. And some of the advice I read in these books - and have tried to follow - will probably work tremendously well. For some people. But I've now come to realise they didn't - and don't - work for me. I'm sharing them here so that, if it turns out they're as unsuitable for you as they are for me, you can avoid making the same mistakes as I did (I kick sand in my own face so you don't have to, as it were.) So here they are - the Things I Must Now Stop Doing Because They're Totally Not Helping:

1 - I must stop reading so many writing how-to books!
Did I mention I lurve those books? There are a million, squillion of them out there - and the lion's share of Kindle versions of them are ludicrously cheap as well. I'm talking less than the price of a cup of coffee. And loads of them are pretty good too - brilliant even. I've learned a ton of genuinely useful and insightful things from them. So I got into a habit of reading them regularly - a little, bite-sized chunk of one in a ten-to-fifteen-minute feast every morning, just before I begun my writing session. And boy oh boy, was that inspiring! I would put the book down, infused with the heady cocktail of Successful Writers' Secrets and absolutely panting to get to my computer and immediately put them into practice. In terms of giving me a massive kick up the motivation it was like an intravenous double espresso - if I hadn't felt in the mood to sit down and write before each reading session, I sure as heck was afterwards...

Until I actually started tapping out words onto the page, that is.

Suddenly everything I was typing didn't look good enough anymore. Was it showing not telling in the clever way described in that book I'd just read? Is putting that bit in a terrible cliche like that other book warned against? In fact, does this whole scene follow the arc structure recommended in that other book that was so great...? I'd studied the texts, and now my poor old brain was thinking I had to pass the exam to prove I'd learned it all properly. Not the way to write freely and creatively.

I still stand by my original statement; there are some fantastic books out there on the writing craft that I would thoroughly recommend because I do believe they can help people become better writers. But, like the yummier versions of stuff we put in our mouths to feed ourselves each day, too much too often is not good for your writing health. So I'm putting myself on a How-To-Book Diet - I can still have them, but only as an occasional treat, not a daily snack before writing sessions. I may well get cranky and headachey for a week or so, but in the long run I think it will do me good.

2 - I must stop obsessing about my productivity!
One of the pieces of advice I read in one of the aforementioned how-to books talked about pinning down your most productive time to write. Some people are at their creative peak early in the morning, it stated, while others find they work better late afternoon or even late at night. The key to ensuring you're always working at maximum capacity, therefore, is to discover when you are at your most creative and strive to set that time aside in your schedule for writing. The process advised for doing that was to devise a spreadsheet to track not just the hours you spent writing each day, but the precise times you began and ended those writing sessions and the resulting word count for each of those sessions. Within two or three months, it was assured, a definite pattern should emerge as to which hours of the day produced the highest word counts.

Well, as an ex-software techie and ever-so-slightly-OCD person, I was definitely up for that! I already had an Excel spreadsheet for tracking my hours devoted to writing projects (to make sure I kept up my targeted at-least-ten-hours-a-week schedule) so it was just a matter of tweaking that to record the extra layer of detail. Soon the secrets of my productivity peak would be revealed to me... what could possibly go wrong?

Well... turns out that, in a situation like this, being ever-so-slightly-OCD is something of a hindrance to the process.

Well I spent two hours writing that page there, but in that time I deleted large chunks and rewrote them three times, so is the total wordcount Microsoft Word's giving me an accurate assessment of how many words I actually wrote in those two hours or isn't it? And if I stop for lunch now, do I stop my 'session' and resume it once I've finished - even if that means I've only been writing for half an hour - because I can't write while I'm eating so if I included the time spent eating lunch in my session that wouldn't be a true reflection of my word count either?  What about toilet breaks - they probably distort the accuracy of my word counts too, surely? And since I've got this column that calculates how many words-per-hour I'm writing in each session... Excel can only handle time in decimal format, so if I don't want to give it (or, more accurately, myself) a migraine I'll have to make sure I only write in chunks of time I can divide decimally. And I can't record any times of less than an hour, because the formula I'm using to calculate words-per-hour multiplies any value of less than one (no, I don't know why either but it does - hey, I became a software technician to tell computers to do maths on my behalf, okay?) And that'll distort my word count even further...

And I'm supposed to concentrate on writing my novel when I've got all that swimming around in my brain?

But the most ironic thing of all? The results I did collect told me... nothing at all. Actually no, that's not entirely true. They told me that I always seemed to write roughly about the same time of day every day, give or take an hour. Well, yeah - there's a reason for that. That part of the day every day is the only time I get to fit in my writing sessions - at all other times of the day I'm busy doing the things I have to do to run a house and raise a kid and all that other stuff. And in the two months of tracking, my word count for those times every day was so varied the only 'pattern' emerging was that there wasn't one. Chocolate consumption probably had more of an effect. Or possibly... the brain-screwing stress of tracking my every writing moment to the nth degree..!

So I've reverted to a simpler, less scary spreadsheet. I track the total hours spent on a project each day, and the word count for that. I then have weekly totals for hours and word counts. And that's it. If I was the Mel Gibson version of William Wallace I would be painting my face blue and screaming "Frreeedommmm!" right now.

3 - I must stop treating the prep for my writing sessions like Sacred Rituals!
Lots of writers have their little 'things' they like to do to get themselves 'in the zone' for a writing session. Some like to have a pot of coffee brewing, so they can imbibe as they write. Others have specific snacks within grabbing distance. My main two are my Writing Soundtrack - a specific collection of instrumental pieces of music that reflect the mood of whatever I'm working on, playing low in the background as I write - and burning scented candles (the latter is particularly helpful if I'm also banning myself from eating chocolate that day.)

As I said, little things like these are great for getting yourself in the right frame of mind for writing. But if you get into a mindset where you believe you can't write as effectively without them... that's when they can start working against you. Sometimes I buy a different brand of scented candle than my usual, preferred one - and when I use it at home it doesn't actually have any scent at all, because it's just a cheap rip-off of a scented candle. Or my husband finishes his appointments early to work from home, and I can't have my music on because he needs to be able to make work-related phone calls without 'background distractions.' Just recently - well, round about the same time as I started getting snared by the above activities, actually - if either of those things happened it felt like someone had slammed the brakes on my writing session. How could I possibly bury myself in my writing and produce anything decent without the scent of Vanilla Honey wafting around, and tunes like Still Alive tinkling away in the background? No wonder my word-count-per-hour was so low today! And no wonder I was failing to make proper use of Setting to show not tell in this scene, like it said in that book I read earlier..!

They say a bad workman blames his tools - and that was me, blaming a lack of access to tools that - in all honestly - weren't essential to getting the job done. Nice to have, yeah - like a massage is a nice thing to have at the end of a stressful day (so I'm told.) But does not having said massage render you incapable of functioning? No. You just carry on without it. My writing rituals are not magic spells that enable me to channel my Mystic Writing Spirit Guide - they're just Stuff I Tend To Do while I'm writing.

So there we go. I tried to chase my Muse - but he thought I was hunting him down and ran the hell away. Guess that's what happens when you go after him with an arsenal of equipment and a slightly deranged look in your eye. Next time I shall just remember the wise words of Stephen King - just  show up at the page regularly and eventually he'll hang around of his own accord.

Can A Little of What You Fancy Do Your Writing Good?

Writers are creative people, yeah? And creative people are sensitive, requiring a higher degree of stimulation in their daily lives than non-creative people.

(Not in a kinky way, of course. Well, okay, maybe some... s'okay, I won't ask. Not my business after all...)

This is the reasoning behind the popular idea that many writers have vices - which, in spite of messing up their everyday lives on a scale of 'not that much' to 'monumentally,' are also what 'fuels their genius' and 'frees their creativity.' Hemingway, for instance; a man renowned as much for being a great drunk as a great writer. Lots of creative types in other fields are also well-known for having a strong liking for stuff that's not entirely good for them; Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones regularly consumed enough drugs to floor an elephant.

This has led to another popular idea/myth; that, without those hedonistic lifestyles, these people would not have been able to create their masterpieces. The drink/drugs/debauched sex orgies were the oxygen for the raging fire burning within; take away that and there would never even have been a spark, never mind a flame.

Sorry, but I think that's mostly bollocks.

When Hemingway famously said "Write drunk, edit sober" people probably took his words a little too literally because of his obvious liking for the former state. I'm willing to bet that the 'drunk' he was talking about was more to do with shutting out your internal censor, writing without stopping to read over what you're writing - not 'drink Jack Daniels until you're writing in your own drunken drool.' I doubt even he would have got much writing done in that state. All the same, the idea persists that his problem with the falling-down-juice was as much what 'made' him a writer as the fact that he... well, y'know, wrote. Would he never, ever have achieved what he did if he'd just limited himself to a couple of beers a week? Seriously?

Then there's Stephen King; in the earlier years of his writing career he admitted to being a massive coke-head, whacking out bestseller novel after bestseller novel while flying high as a kite on the white stuff. He hasn't touched drugs for over twenty years now, but he's still just as prolific - and as popular - as he ever was. He didn't need the drugs to be great at what he did - he already was.

So no, if you want to become a better writer, taking the kind of 'trip' that doesn't involve some form of transport is not a required part of the process. Sure, some dubious substances make you hallucinate, see wondrous visions, smell colours or simply transform your iPhone into Robert Pattinson's butt-cheeks. That's not your imagination on fire. That's just your brain going funny, and it doesn't just happen for the 'creative types,' it happens for the dunderheads too. Y'know, the kind of people who think The Jeremy Kyle Show is a documentary...

On the other hand... there is another school of thought that's become popular recently to at least preach about, even if it's not necessarily practised. You've probably heard it at least once or twice - feel free to stop me if this sounds familiar...

'A creative mind requires a healthy body; you should eat only healthy food that nourishes you, and take plenty of exercise to keep yourself fit - don't put junk food into your body, you must treat it like a temple in order to be a productive writer... ohmmm... *sound of wind chimes*...'

Sorry, but I think that's bollocks too. Well, just a little bit anyway.

I like chocolate. No, let me put that into better perspective. There are times when I would crawl through fire, acid rain and shards of broken glass for chocolate. Chocolate, however, as all those nutritionist-types and Government Health Officials will tell you, is Bad. Naughty. To add to this, I also have a medical condition similar to diabetes type II which means I have to restrict my sugar intake - bad news if I had any plans to embark on The Chocolate Diet. So I don't eat it as often as I'd like to - along with all other sugar-packed naughties like tomato-based sauces, bread (yes, bread!) and - somewhat surprisingly - an awful lot of diet foods (honestly - check the packets. Who knew, eh?)

But here's my confession... when I'm drying up on the writing front, when nothing's coming and I feel like I have the world's worse case of literary constipation - I eat chocolate. And not just your cheap, everyday bar of chocolate either. I'm talking badass chocolate; the really good-quality stuff with a ridiculously high cocoa content and the ability to make you put on ten pounds just by reading the ingredients on the wrapper. Hey-ell yeah - bring it on, baby!

And you know what? It helps. It always helps. Badass chocolate never lets me down! 'Treat my body like a temple?' Pffft - yeah right - only if it's a chocolate temple! Yes, I know, before you even say it - the effect is psychological rather than because of any magical wonder-substance in Badass Chocolate (why has nobody marketed a product called that? Hell, I'd buy it..!) Don't care. It works.

A little of what you fancy does do your writing good - don't be bullied by the Healthy Body Healthy Mind Brigade! Embrace your chosen vice; chocolate, coffee, cake, pizza, whatever - for those times when your writing soul needs a big hug. (Although I'd still discourage embracing hard drugs as your chosen vice, of course - 'a little of what you fancy that's not illegal and likely to seriously mess you up' is more what I mean.)

Just remember though, that - like a hug - if it goes on too long and with too much enthusiasm it gets restricting and just a little bit creepy.

Six Weeks Is Longer Than I Thought

OMG (as I believe people under thirty years old say these days) have I really got three-and-a-half more weeks to go before I can start on 'Renegades' Draft 2? I'm sure weeks weren't this long when I were a little girl...!

I've given up on the kid's comedy novel, by the way. Well no - not given up exactly, just pushed it aside for a future project. Mothballed it, I suppose you could say. Instead I am now working on - another sci-fi novel. Yep, it seems I just can't leave the genre alone, no matter how hard I try, so I decided not to fight it and just go with it. Although I suppose I'd better not get to like this one too much, since I'll have to put it aside again when I start 'Renegades' Draft 2 - and even when that book's fully complete, it's just Part I in a trilogy, so I'm going to have to write the other two before I can go back this new one... Tsk! Get me, with my 'Oooh, I'm writing a trilogy" line - without even knowing if Draft 1 of Book 1 will make the cut yet. Me and my ridiculously lofty future plans!

How on earth do the professonal novelists deal with this? How do they resist the burning temptation to take 'just a little peek' at their simmering Draft One for six whole weeks? Some of them wait even longer. I haven't taken any sneaky peeks yet - but most of my writing thoughts have been consumed with what I remember of it, already debating in my head what I'll probably need to change, cut, add in... Am I allowed to do that? Is that breaking the rules? Ah, Stephen King et al - you give us these rules about 'setting your manuscript aside for a time,' but when we have questions WHERE ARE YOU, eh? EH?

This Week I Have Mostly Been... Procrastinating

Well... it's Confession Time, I guess.

During the writing of  'The Renegades: Redemption' I was cracking out a steady pace of about 10-15 hours a week of work on it. Yeah, alright, I'm not asking you to faint with admiration, don't worry. I'm well aware that's not many hours compared to, like, a full-time job or anything. But when you're a mum and housewife you don't get many hours that you're 'allowed' to call your own for 'indulging' your 'little hobby.'

 ( I HATE that word - 'housewife,' by the way. Makes me feel like a mindless drone. 'Domestic Engineer?' Makes me sound like a plumber or something. Not that I've anything against plumbers... it's just not a very accurate description to apply to running a house and bringing up a kid, that's all. We need something more dynamic that doesn't sound like a patronising mickey-take. Future project, perhaps? Anyway, I'm digressing...)

The point I was making, just before my brain randomly took a wander away from it, is that I had myself a nice little writing schedule whilst writing Renegades and - more importantly - I stuck to it. Now I've had to put it aside to stew for a while, and work on something else that's about as different from that as it's possible to get, my schedule's gone... a little wonky, it's fair to say. To the point where this week, for the first time in about six months, I am unlikely to achieve my minimum 10 hours of writing.

Okay, as Crimes of the Century go, it's hardly up there with Grand Larceny. But it's made me feel twitchy. Does it mean I'm Failing As A Writer? Aren't writers supposed to bounce out of bed every morning going "I want to write today, I was born to write, let me write right now, damn it!" ...Or something like that.

I've got to be honest, I haven't felt like that any day of this past week. Now that I'm working on this other project, it's been more like "Oh god, I suppose I'd better do some work on this again... nothing's coming... aw jeez, I'm not sure I can even do this..." It's not because it's not a 'fun' thing to write; it's a comedy, after all, so it should be ten times the fun of the predominantly giggle-free Renegades. And, if I'm completely honest with myself, it's also not because my six-year-old son is still off school, and doesn't go back until Wednesday next week. Sure, he has the energy of a Tasmanian Devil, and I've long run out of ways to get him out of the house that don't cost tons of money, don't need a car to get to and don't - JUST DON'T, MUMMY - involve going anywhere near shops to buy ANY things that aren't new toys or games. But that in itself is not what's slowed my momentum down. So what is the cause then?

Perhaps I'm 'missing' Renegades. After all, I devoted six months and some 200-plus hours of writing to it - and once I start on Draft 2 it'll be at least another 200 more before it's completed, I'll wager. Perhaps I'm just having trouble adjusting to the shift in perspective, from dark, gritty sci-fi to children's comedy in the space of a week. Or perhaps I'm just subconsciously trying to 'take a week off work' and feeling too guilty about that to let it properly happen. I can't imagine that, if I did, my Writing Brain would really shrivel to the size of a pickled walnut and I'd just be sitting there drooling and grunting the next time I tried to write. But it's there, in the back of my head, nagging away like an exasperated parent. The Fear.

Is that the Writer's Ultimate Nightmare, I wonder? That you somehow 'lose the muse' forever if you stop, for even a couple of days? Or have I just become as nerdy about my 'schedule' as I am about many other aspects of my life? Maybe I should join a support group or something.

Or maybe I should kick myself up the bum and get back to my writing, like a good little writer. *Sigh*... okay, ta-ta for now then...