Receding goals

We writers are odd coves. I’m within a few thousand words of the end of the first draft of Queen of Nowhere, and I don’t have anything else I have to do today, but I’ve spent the last hour or so cleaning the house (which, admittedly, needs it) and carrying on the activity known around here as ‘pissing about on t’internets’.

I’d like to say I’m prevaricating in order to prolong the wonderful experience of shaping my story but that would be both pretentious and inaccurate. Actually I’d like to be finished. I want as much time as possible between the end of the first draft and the start of rewriting, and I have plenty of other writing projects to fill that time with. Also, I’ve scheduled a social life for August, and I plan to be around for some of that.

Yet here I am, justifying not writing by posting to my blog (how many writers do that, eh?) and wondering if I can fit in a spot of weeding before lunch.

Some of it comes down to the lessons I learnt last year when I had to do a total rewrite of the original ending of Bringer of Light (which, incidentally, I now have my author’s copies of and very handsome they are too). I never want another crazy autumn like that. Better to take this denouement slow, and get it at least approximately right first time.

Maybe there’s something else going on, something deeper, to do with the creative process. Or possibly my mind has just started its summer holidays. Whatever the reason, and regardless of whether I finish the book in time or not, this time next week I’ll be sitting in a (possibly quite muddy) field, drinking cider, listening to live music, and not writing – but, knowing me, kind of wishing I was.

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