Happy New Year!

A Happy New Year to all who happen to read this blog.

How I Currently Feel About Writing:

I can truthfully say that I have never been happier than I am now, but there is still a long way to go. I need to resolve some ‘lifestyle issues’ to completely achieve Nirvana, but I am at least on the right path. Writing is the most enjoyable work that I have ever done, and it could only possibly be bettered by painting, or sculpture, or some other similarly creative and artistic occupation. It has become my obsession, limited only by the inability of my brain to write creatively for more than six hours in one day. Any more than that and the law of diminishing returns begins to apply. The harder I try, the worse it gets.

When I read what I’ve written afterwards, I realise why I should always stop at the height of my daily creative period, when I’ve just completed a well written, pregnant paragraph that is just begging for the next one to be started. If I have the self-discipline to stop, I can honestly say that, for me, the anticipation of resuming again the next day is almost too much to bear. It’s like the day before your tenth birthday, when your dad’s promised you he’s going to get you your first bike. You eventually get to sleep that night, but your mind’s so attuned to the next day that you inevitably dream about riding the bike with your pals through idyllic, sun dappled woods.

I find that writing’s the same, and during the dream phase of sleep my brain continues to create. I wake up regularly at three or four in the morning, and have to get out of bed and write down what’s in my mind. Only when I’ve done that can I go back to sleep again. It’s a wonderful feeling, and in writing this current book, I’ve realised something that I wish I had known thirty years ago.

I might not be the most skilful writer that ever put pen to paper, but I’m learning…fast. What I do have in abundance however, and in what I’m convinced is at least similar quantity to anyone else is… imagination. I’ve got it in hitherto unknown reserves that have been lying there, dormant, and untapped, like the oil at the bottom of the North Sea that nobody knew about until the 1960s. I’m not saying I’m special, or different. I realise that most people have imagination, but my God, I wish I’d realised earlier just how valuable imagination and creativity are.

The real skill, of course, is in converting imagination into well written prose. But it’s a skill that can be learned, and that’s what I’m doing at the moment, and is why I am having to re-write virtually the whole of what I have created so far. I’ve written over 200,000 words of my first novel, and when I read through it, I recognise that much of the early work is not very good. However, what I am surprised about is that the re-writing is just as enjoyable as working with a clean page. As an ex-engineer, trained to do things right the first time, I would have expected absolute frustration at having to re-write. Instead, there’s massive satisfaction in being able to identify where improvements can be made, and even multiple re-writes cause me no frustration whatsoever. That’s an indication of how enjoyable the process of creative writing is.

I’ll write a bit more soon on opening sentences, the need to write with confidence, and to have the confidence to tell people about it.

Ian