I write when I don't feel like writing

I’m currently averaging just over one thousand words a day on book two, mostly because I’m too busy to write everyday so I do sessions five times a week instead, one day out of the weekend and four days a week.

At the same time I’m waiting for feedback on book 1 and writing another novel, or some kind of pet project, I’m not entirely sure what it is yet but its fun to write. A deliberately trashy novel that I might post the opening of at some point. Aww hell I’ll post the opening at the end of the post anyway.

I think there is a topic worth bringing up when it comes to writing, though its not one I think about too often anymore.

Once however, when I was a lot younger, I only wrote when I felt like writing. Which led to me never finishing almost anything. I can’t be the only one that does this, whether with prose or poetry. You have that great idea, that first paragraph, that line, that verse and you scribble it down in a mad hurry and then when the silence follows you say, “I’ll come back to it when I feel like continuing.”

Maybe that works for you, I’m sure it does for some people.

But I gave up on that a long time ago.

I believe your feelings aren’t the best reason to do a damn thing. I know this intimately as someone who is bipolar. If I listened to my feelings my life would be a train wreck. It was for awhile. If I didn’t try to counter act depression and depressive thoughts sometimes I’d be on my ass for the rest of the day, waiting for something to change. I have waited, but if you’re in my head you’d hear that somewhere in the corner is the urge to move, to get up, to get better, even if it’s quiet as hell. If I listened to my every impulse I’d be climbing off the walls or following a manic urge to the inevitable crash. So to hell with ‘gut feelings’ and doing what you just feel like doing. I have an extreme form of what most people already have. A fickle and undependable compass for their actions.

I’m no Spock, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t trust them, not really.

The work define what you do next. I don’t always feel like writing. Sometimes I stare at a page for ages working out what sentence comes next. Sometimes it flows easy and joyous. Sometimes it hurts, rewriting the same damn sentence three times only to find it still sucks afterwards. But it gets done. Short stories get finished, novels get written, even if its slow.

I think of it as faucet sometimes. You turn on the faucet and it might just flow, but sometimes it sputters, or drips. But you still have to turn that faucet on. And with practice it comes easier, writing comes easier, volume comes easier. You can trust that faucet a bit more.

Which means that to start with it’s going to be hard, there’s going to be more drip than flow. Every sentence counts though. That’s what I also tell myself. Think about it this way. If you gave yourself an hour to write a day and aimed for 500 words, like a good friend of mine whose made it to over 30k a a day doing that, you’ll have a hell of a lot of time to just ‘think’. If you typed straight, at your speed, most likely you’d be done in a fraction of an hour, hell, you could do 1k easily, but it’s the thinking and hesitating and planning that takes time.

When I really can’t figure something out I either lie on the couch, go for a walk or stare at the page. That counts as writing to me, because till I did that I wasn’t able to produce a damn word. And when I go to the couch I’m almost always frustrated and doubtful of my own capabilities. But trust it, the ideas will come, the next sentence will emerge and its all part of the process.

I trust the process and habit, not my feelings. Feelings inform the actual words, the writing itself, but habit and process get you in the chair and the words on the page.

Now for the opening to my new pet project:

HTWACN or (How to write a commercially successful novel)

Chapter 1: How to write a commercially successful novel.

To write a commercially successful novel is to first choose whether to be a courtesan or a whore. The courtesan commits to her craft, writing a stunning, honest, voluminous, buxom novel that seduces you, coming out of the shadows to claim the best sellers list or to deliver a familiar dose of the same sexy drug you’ve had before.

I am a whore.

I do not aim for best sellers list, I aim to be functionally commercial. Therefore I am to write a novel containing a tawdry love story, werewolves, vampires, graphic sex in cars, wish fulfilment with a twist and the occasional cliffhanger.

To begin with, I required a killer line.

So here I am sitting in a coffee shop which claims to be a coffee experience, sipping cold drip coffee, because they did not have hot drip, wracking my brains for a killer line when she, she, damnable she enters my mind again, like a fox through a cat flap.

I wrack my brain but all I do is check my phone for her messages. She was meant to come meet me, well, to be more honest, I wrote to her, I said:

“Everyone meets someone in their lives that were they to ask them to love them they would drop everything, move across the world, dump whoever they were with, quit their job and start a new life with the person of their dreams. You are that person for me, so I am asking you to come to me, instead of me come to you, because I am lazy.”

And she actually wrote back, even though I was utterly shitfaced when I wrote the message.

She said,

“I am engaged to Max, who you said you liked btw. I live in London, not Hong Kong. I was promoted to head of my own team, let alone done well in my industry, so as funny as this is its also impossible. But I am worried about you. Would you like to meet?”

And I said yes. I told her where, I told her when, she never responded.

Now the sun is setting, which is a good metaphor, because the sun sets every day and I have drunk texted her so many times it may as well have been every day that my sun sets, as I worry about closing time, because this coffee experience ends in 23 minutes and she has not yet arrived or even responded.

And I will risk it all for her, even though it is a full moon.

Even though I can feel my blood beginning to itch and the chained rage inside my chest beginning to quake, even though I think I saw a few grey hairs on the back of my index finger I will risk it all in case she, the love of my life, shows up before closing time.

But the full moon is rising and I have yet to come up with my killer line.

So I shall take inspiration from life and I shall write:

“I waited for her for 23 minutes, even though she was a werewolf.” Which is a great line, I think, a real hook of a line, and I”m about to type more, to pour forth words in a torrent of creative rain

And then she texted me.

She wrote: “Help. I’m at McDonalds. The one near you.”

As another grey hair grew on my hand.