Just Keep Rolling Along

Because of my disruptive pattern of work, odd shifts at odd times, I shape my week to leave me as much time at the weekend, or my version thereof, for my writing. Nonetheless, I find it difficult to settle into a pattern of writing. Just as I achieve it, back I am to the disruptive pattern.

Pourtant, c'est pas un germissement, c'est une pipe.

My point is once I find I am on a roll with my writing, it is best if I keep rolling; keep writing.

Example:

Last Monday I wrote approximately 1,000 words, Tuesday I wrote 2,500+. Wednesday I was back to shifts and struggled to write 150 words.

I am probably very boring company when writing, (I’m probably very boring company when not writing – let me say it before you do), my head is elsewhere, but ideas are spinning and the process of writing is reduced to setting down what I have in my head on to paper, or screen. I find blockages, doubts or hesitations recede. The momentum helps carry me through.

For instance, I wrote the best part of a chapter on Monday devoted to a scene I had not even planned. While writing it, an uninvited voice kept whispering in my ear that it was irrelevant and didn’t move the story along.

The voice was wrong on a number of counts:

1. It describes a situation most of us will recognise and so helps the reader identify with the situation of a protagonist who is less than sympathetic.
2. It marks the start of the final downward spiral for the main character.
3. It allows me to develop the relationship between two characters.

All of these things I had intended to do at some point; however, while pondering on possible routes during the course of my working week, my imagination had become bogged down in more and more prosaic or predictable scenarios.

The process of writing magically gathered up my intentions and delivered the solution in a manner I had not expected.