No such thing as Writer's Block

There is no such thing as Writer's Block. There is fatigue of course, but rest and, for me at least, birding are the remedies for that. (Illness is another matter.) Writer's Block is a poor excuse for failing to produce anything.

Research and note-making are one thing (two actually), but there is no better way to develop ideas than writing itself. Language is power and the key to unlocking the imagination, be it words, the vocabulary of paint or the syntax of film or whatever medium you choose to work in.

Time is the enemy, not Writer's Block. You can undam your imagination through practising your craft. Time, alas, cannot be defeated.

The New Year brings with it a lot of opportunities and a list of projects to work through. Having had a rest, on 2 January 2012 I expect to hit the keyboard hard.

My Kindle Runneth Over: Christmas is for reading, not for writing.

Trying to get back to working on the book this morning, I realise that Christmas is for reading, not for writing. The balance of pleasure has suddenly tilted; the weight of the New Year will bring it back into kilter. (Be aware of how the sub-conscious works - check your work for terrible puns!).

I have been overtaken by the momentum of Christmas ... and all that means in terms of the breaking of routines, going out and getting up later and later. Oh and alcohol, and if there was ever a destroyer of creativity it is that one.

The brain needs a break. I know where my book is going. I have a pile of project ideas to get stuck into. This is the season of relaxation and nurturing the digestion.

A decision.

I shall resume writing in the New Year... full of good intention and the self-discipline to make the book happen. Meanwhile, my Kindle runneth over.

The Smiling Email: Rejection doesn't have to mean dejection

Right on the button... Three months after submitting my synopsis and sample chapters, another rejection from a very nice agent. I expect a couple more of these in the run up to Christmas as agents try to clear their desks.

Disheartened? No.

The Key to Finlac will find a place eventually, in its current form or in an altered state.

My response? I replied to the agent warmly, thanking her for taking the time to have a look and indicated that I am half way through a new project, which I am. And I think it is going well.

Keep all avenues open. The Key to Finlac is the past and the future. Right now I am happy to live in the present.

A children’s book is the Christmas Tree in our literary calendar

A children’s book is the Christmas Tree in our literary calendar, shedding light into a dark world; it is a centrepiece for the imagination.

Call me old fashioned. A children’s book offers hope & represents the best of us. It is an entertainment and a celebration, a confection masking subtle instruction. It has a moral purpose. It makes us feel secure.

As with trees, accept no fakes. There should always be the smell of pine and loam, mingled with the faint scent of chocolate. Never become too old to lie down beneath its illuminated branches.

Forget your adult themes of gold & silver. Dress the tree in gaudy colours and hang it with accumulated stuff! Light it up whenever the day grows dark.

What Ahab and the Bittern did for me

What's the point of reading Moby Dick, then ending up like Ahab and the Whale?

The Bittern is no longer elusive. I videoed it yesterday and got it out of my system. It was sunny so I went birding and did no writing. No point in heaping pressure on myself.

No matter. It is raining this morning as a result of a deep Atlantic depression and and I wrote 1200 words in two and a half hours with a latte in between. I feel optimistic and back on track. Over the weekend I was able to make some major decisions about the plot of the book and darkened some characters in an unexpected way, which means I shall have to revisit and rewrite the first few chapters.

In the mean time, I shall keep going until I reach the end. Only then will I go back and sort out the beginning.

Shame Ahab never had that chance.

Deadlines or Dead Lines? - Working with the tyranny of time.

Back to full fitness today, touch wood, but I have lost two week's writing (about 8,000 words) and that raises the question of the deadline I set for finishing my current project: 30 January 2012. I had allowed for the Christmas break in between.

I am not up against the constraints of any publishing contract or Scrutiny Committee meeting, but the deadline is still important to me; the only way to get things done. Shall I work through Christmas to make up? No. Friends & family to see and films to watch.

Shall I up my word rate to 1,500 for sixteen consecutive days to meed the deadline? Beware the sound of exhausted prose.

1,200 words a day is a possibility, but in the end I shall have to be philosophical and pragmatic, as I am about videoing the elusive Bittern. I didn't see it at Slimbridge this morning. There will be another day, another bird, another book.

Right now I am thinking mid- February, which is ok as long as I produce 1000 words by end of Monday.

Juggling with a Book and a Bittern: Can a man multi-task?

Can a man multi-task? Can an author write two books simultaneously? Can this writer do anything while he has a hacking cough? It's been a week stuck indoors now.

To get back to work this morning, I've been laying out the structure of a story for 8-10 year olds - fifteen index cards. Gives me the impression I've done a morning's work. I shall write it soon... but at the same time as my current project? Time will tell.

Meanwhile, I have The Key to Finlac to sell... or revise again, the ebook of Badgerman & Bogwitch to finish and five other books I would like to write.

All that is required is a clear head, hard work and a steady hand... and of course a lot of luck.

Meanwhile, that Bittern has been showing all week at Slimbridge... I want to make a decent video of it and that is a frustration too!

Maybe I'll get there tomorrow.

When does restoration become a revision?

 Today, I've been working on the ebook edition of Badgerman & Bogwitch. It has been a slow process, I started work on it more than six months ago. Working without a deadline is never a good thing.

Before I could even think about revising the text, I had to restore it. I had typed the original in WordPerfect 5.1 in the early part of the last decade of the last century, white text on a lovely blank blue screen. (I favour a blue screen and have managed to recreate such a workplace in Scrivener for my current projects).

WordPerfect files presented me with a problem. I chose the cheap route and managed to import them into NeoOffice to convert them into Word.docs. Even then the formatting needed quite a lot of work before I could move them into Scrivener, which conveniently converts files into ebooks.

A while back, thinking I'd finished, I loaded the final MS onto my Kindle to preview it. The spacing between paragraphs was awry and the First Line Indents were nowhere to be seen. Today I have been back into the Scrivener files repeatedly pressing fn7 to add indents. The consolation being that I have managed to listen to much of the back catalogue of Kate Bush. (That's another story.) The paragraph spacing I shall sort out at another time.

Meanwhile, the ebook has allowed me to make revisions to the original text. Was I right or wrong?