Tuesday 30 August 2011

A Quick Note on the Advantages of Not Listening to Me

Sometimes I ramble. In fact I ramble so much that I've tried to do this entry a few times now and failed because of my amazing rambling power. So now I am focused. Hell yeah!

Yesterday I made the point that you should 'Keep writing or the universe will implode and then no one will like you!' or something like that. Well I think I might have worded it a little wrong. What I was really talking about was the importance of not putting what you're writing away for months and months at a time, if it's going well at the time.

If things aren't going well, to the extent that you feel you need to stop and have some time to think about your book, or consider starting it again, long breaks are great. Hell, it took me two years to refocus myself after my high school draft. It was a period of reinvention, and I put pen to paper (or hands to keys more accurately) very few times during that period. It was all going on in my head, and a much better book came out of that.

But this draft now is going really well. I had my problem I described in my last post, but that was relevant to a specific chapter, not the whole thing. So overall, it's going great. I feel like this is it, this is the draft that will eventually become the final book. It'll take a lot of revisions I'm sure, but I'm also sure I wont have to start again... again.

Short breaks are great though. When I say short I mean anything from a few minutes to a few days to a few weeks. Sometimes it's good to have a little time off, because then you come back refreshed. Recently, because I'm a nerd, I've been loading up Doctor Who videos to watch when I feel like a break. I'll write for 20 minutes, then watch a bit, then do some more. 

And I do also have a life!

"Come on Ian. Who are you trying to kid here?"

No mysterious voice! It's true! I have an amazing girlfriend and great friends, and have been known occasionally to consider leaving the house to see them! Crazy I know, but true. So don't listen to me from before, telling you to 'KEEP WRITING OR ELSE I'LL KICK YOU!' because that's silly. Keep writing if it's going well, but, as a friend told me yesterday, 'man cannot live on bread alone.' 

...And just to clarify, that friend was not Jesus. Just someone quoting Jesus. As you do...

Ian.

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