Changing regimes – and changing back again

Since 2003 I’ve spent the first two hours of every day writing. Yes, even weekends and when on holiday. However, I don’t beat myself up if I don’t manage it. I count the weekends and holidays as extra and set them against the days when I don’t manage to write.

I also try to write 2000 words. I don’t always manage it but often come close – say 1750.

This can actually be quite productive and has led to a novel every eighteen months or so, and several short stories, articles and academic papers.

Then this academic year for the first time, it all seemed to go to pot. I just couldn’t seem to fit it in. Work seemed to make more demands.  

Ten Writing resolutions for 2010

1. Catch up on that 2000 words / two hours a day thing. How can I call myself a writer unless I do at least that? That is after all what it is all about. It doesn’t matter whether it’s fiction, non-fiction or academic papers as long as it’s writing.
2. Get Babel finished. Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ve three and a half more edits to do. Mid February will see the end of it perhaps.
3. Finish And They Thought I Didn’t Know. A little relief from edits of Babel. It’s my first poetry novel.
4. Sack my publisher if she doesn’t come up with the goods.
5. Get funding for Potatoes in Spring. Could this be the basis of a sabbatical? It fits in so well with Holocaust studies yet has the odd twist of showing a German Point Of View.
6. Start Peace Child. Odd, working with that title again. For years it was the title of The Prophecy which was actually published in September 2009.
7. Give some thought to Voices. This will be a Young Adult novel about a girl who hears voices in her head.
8. Give some thought to In Search of the Sun God. Will this be an excuse to go back to Tenerife? It’s all about the people who went there looking for the Sun God.
9. Heavily market Babel. What will it take to make sure that that really gets out there?
10. Keep doing all those other writerly things that still count. Remember that nothing is ever a waste of time – including waiting for the tram.

Get Writing

Some days are just so busy that by the time you find those few minutes’ you hardly have the brain space to write any more. It isn’t just a matter of having enough time. You need the chuntering voice to stop debating the other issues.
I long for the time when I could get a couple of hours writing done before I started the office work. When you do have the time after you’ve been running around like a mad thing, you can’t get the necessary concentration.
Yet, it is the mere habit of sitting down at the keyboard, or with a pen in your hand that brings that concentration. It may take twenty minutes or so to get into it, but get into you can, any time anywhere. Then you don’t want to stop.
I used to give a young boy French lessons. I asked his older sister who supervised his homework to make sure that he did at least fifteen minutes a day. The first five were always the hardest, she reported. After that he was into it and he got going. Sometimes he did as much as an hour. That is what I now have to be like with my writing. It isn’t as comfortable as when I came to it fresh and raring to go. But it still works.
I must remember as well that I tend to write better on the days when I struggle.

Not only writing

I really am lucky in that I am employed because I am a writer and that sitting at my desk at work and doing my own writing is not a crime as it might be for some other people. Having said that, there are many tasks that I have to perform which aren’t directly connected with my own writing:
· Designing modules
· Writing handbooks and lesson plans for those modules
· Preparing and delivering lectures and seminars
· Seeing students about matters to do with their creative work
· Seeing students about other matters
· Attending meetings
· Admin, admin and admin …..
· Bidding for funds (another opening for rejections?)
· Marking students’ work
Then there are all the tasks I do because I am a writer but which are not actually writing:-
· Networking
· Critiquing
· Reading proofs
· Writerly research (all three levels)
· Sending out query letters
· Artists’ treats
· Being nosy
· Filling out a tax return
· Giving talks and workshops to schools and other groups
· Marketing
· Attending festivals.
All of this leaves little time for writing - maybe two hours or about 2,000 words on a good day. That’s what I actually try to stick to, weekdays at least. And I allow myself catch-up time at the weekends. That is glorious – a wonderful excuse not to do the housework. Interestingly, also, that is almost my optimum working pattern. If I try to write for longer on any one day or try to write more words, I end up slowing right down and the quality plunges. You can still do a great deal with that time / word limit. It’s not as if I hate the other tasks either. Though I could do without the admin and filling in the tax returns.

Charles Dickens – a Role Model of a Writer

You tend to hear a lot about him this time of the year, and Christmas just wouldn’t be the same without at lease one version of A Christmas Carol. There’s usually one or two take-offs as well – this year included Holby City. I suppose also the people in the televised / filmed version of his stories remind us of Christmas cards.

We’ve been blessed recently with an excellent BBC production of Little Dorrit and a film of Nicholas Nickelby was broadcast this holiday. They also recently did Oliver Twist, which was repeated this year.

But set aside the slightly old-fashioned prose, the unfashionable omniscient and intrusive author, you are left with a fine story teller. Oh, sometimes the coincidences stretch the imagination, but we ought to remember that many a telling of a true-life story has been rejected because it seemed improbable.

You must forgive him too for his larger than life characters – Bumble, Mr Dorrit, Micawber, Betsy Trotwood and the donkeys, because they are actually such glorious caricatures and bring a much needed humour to the sometimes disturbing content. The important characters are natural and straight. They are fully rounded. Even the sweet-natured, new age Nick Nick has a vile temper and his wicked miserly uncle is reduced to remorse and suicide when he learns the truth about his son.

I have the ambition now that when I retire I shall reread all of his novels.

And wouldn’t he have been a good blogger if the technology had been available then? Aren’t his American Notes and Pictures from Italy glorious? It is good to note that he too, full time writer or not, had to do the talking tour, along there with Jackie Wilson, Philip Pullman, Alan Gibbons and lesser mortals like myself.

I love looking at the writing routines of other writers and I aspire to something like that of Dickens. He would write from eight until two, then take himself off for a walk along the shore, retiring to a pub for an hour or so, people watching I guess, and then dining out or at home usually in the company of friends. That would suit me absolutely. When I can have that routine or one pretty similar, I know I’ve made it as a writer.

And another thing. He would often talk to himself in the mirror, acting out the parts of his characters. Do you know, I’ve caught myself doing that now and then.