Another gem.
On the beach, on a blustery day.
“Mummy this wind sounds like a giant growl that never stops.”
Tag Archives: full time mum writing
Redline it but don’t pop it.
For a long time now, I’ve been thinking that I should explain why it takes me so effing long to write each one of my books and today I’ve been galvanised into it by reading this cracker of a post, here. As well as why it takes me so long to write a book this also brings me onto a subject dear to any writer’s heart; mojo management.
Basically, the premise is that a lot of people are a bit wishy-washy about art and not ‘forcing’ it and use the ‘don’t force it’ line as an excuse to give up and be lazy. He talks about how mood alters your perception and how you can write stuff you think is rubbish only to find, the next day, that it’s not so bad (unfortunately, in my world that process also works in reverse, but I digress).
Now, I get exactly what this fellow means, especially the bit about writing stuff that looks crap and then finding that it’s not so bad. I find reading the first draft of a scene incredibly depressing but I shut my eyes to it and edit. And then somehow, if I put in enough work, it becomes magically transformed and when I read it and think,
“Blimey, I can’t believe I wrote that.” I know it’s time to move onto the next scene.
However, for what it’s worth, I think most of the people talking about not forcing art are actually talking about burning out.
Burn out is way different. Burn out is dangerous. Let me explain.
OK, so, I’m a stay at home Mum with a very lively little 5 year old, elderly parents who aren’t too well and who live a long way away and as the result of a recent traffic accident I currently have to snarf painkillers like smarties. So my life right now features three things in sensurround; worry, constant interruption (welcomed but constant nonetheless) and chemicals.
Hmm… so as you can guess, none of these things are conducive to quality writing outside school hours and none of them make for a lively brain. The chemicals are temporary, so the background is usually just the two things; Mumzilladom and worry about my folks – I’m definitely not the dutiful daughter I always assumed I’d be, which is kind of grim face on.
What I mean is that in anyone’s life there’s a lot going on. Add the odd curve ball, traffic accident at the moment but things like family deaths, organising a surprise party or something like that and it’s easy to find that the heart, not to mention the diary, is too full to create. In my case that’s usually at the point where my mind is so fucking knackered it can’t be arsed to wander.
Trust me on this, I’ve been there and hit the wall and at that point if you don’t step back, you’re going to end up mental. This is not about laziness or procrastination or refusing to start in case we fail, this is about capacity. That’s the point when it’s almost physically painful to write – not at the end of the day, we all feel like that then – but at the beginning.
That’s when you’re in danger of losing the love, of becoming a slave to the addiction as opposed to in love with your characters and addicted to the process. When this happens to me, the only cure is to stop everything, rest my mind and spend a few days/weeks/months, however long it takes putting stuff back in until my mojo returns. It’s entirely natural so if this happens to anyone else, don’t worry, the mojo will return you just have to be patient and wait.
So the big trick, for supreme mojo-management, is never reaching that can’t be arsed to wander point; knowing when to stop spewing out words. There is no option, in times of impending burn out but to sit back and reset.
There’s no harm in redlining your mojo occasionally, except that… hang on… where is the red bit? Oh for heaven’s sake! Trust me to have a car with no red bit. Alright, look, just try to imagine it in OK?
So for me, never getting burn out means writing a bit less but giving it more welly when I do. It’s worth it because when I can’t write, I miss it. There’s no harm redlining your mojo occasionally to, erm, de-carb your chambers (phnark) just don’t keep it there. Burn out is why it’s good plan to have more than one project on the go. Burn out is deeply unpleasant because it leaves you desperate to create, but unable to.
However, burn out should not be confused with laziness. Writing, painting, any art is the most fantastic fun, more than fun, it’s a drug, but it’s also bloody hard work. And frankly, if it isn’t, I suspect you’re doing it wrong.
There are days when writing my book feels like weeing a full sized house brick, except that there are days when I think pissing a housebrick would be easier. What I’m trying to say is that I have never done anything so hard in my entire life. But I can’t let it go. Right now, I’m not writing, but that’s because it’s the holidays and trying to write now is the fastest short cut to burn out there is. I know my limitations and that, I’m afraid, is why I take two, whole, sodding years to write a book. I know, it’s shocking isn’t it?!
Please be patient, K’Barthan three is nearly there but it may well be next April before I can release it.
Filed under General Wittering
Note to self: Must buy fairy dust.
A slightly dodgy post tonight because my life is officially like pushing a rock up hill. I’m not sure what’s going on but the chaos gremlins won’t leave me alone… and I seem to be waiting… for everything. (sings, ‘the waiting is the hardest part… one more day sees one more yard’)
For example, I decided to put a thing on my bike and McMini’s bike that means the two are attached like a tag along.
In the whole container there was only one screw that was bespoke, that I couldn’t have replaced if I’d lost it. So after I’d put the rest of the contraption onto both bikes, which screw did I discover was missing? That’s right. And to be honest, while I know how to do some fairly comprehensively mechanical stuff to an engine, I couldn’t for the life of me work it out. I gave up. McMini has decided he likes the seat anyway, so we’ll stick with it.
My car. No fascia. No dash, no petrol gauge. The 50 mile journey to the garage down a road bristling with speed cameras… interesting. The solution, discovered by the garage, disconnect the battery. Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? Then again, if I had, I’d have only broken the alarm.
Other areas of life… Flat.
I think it’s book sales that’s getting to me. They look terrible, going backwards, but the demographic is different so I’m clinging to the hope that when I finally come to do the figures, it’ll be the same numbers over a wider selection of platforms. If it is, that’s good, but I have to face the possibility that my books may just be bombing.
Writing the books? Well at the moment, I feel like I’m chasing a mirage, the more I write the further away the end seems to be. I would like to finish the K’Barthan trilogy before I die but I’m really beginning to wonder if it’s going to happen. Rolls eyes. Yes it’s taking that fucking long.
Actually, I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a trilogy, I’m about a third into the last book and it’s already as long as the middle one but I think it best to finish it and see if there’s a neat point to halve it.
There are times, when I just have to accept that however ‘real’ writing feels to me I’m not really a ‘real’ author because the only thing I have the capacity to do full time is bring up my boy. Sometimes that’s quite hard, other times I wonder why it might possibly matter. At the moment it’s hard.
Different people have different commitments and also different capabilities – I really can’t write books unless I’m on my own in a quiet room. That does hamper me somewhat. I know other people who can sit to one side at a kid’s party and bash out a couple of chapters. I am in awe, and obviously, seething with professional envy. In any job you’re going to encounter this. There are going to be people who are more productive than you there are going to be people who succeed faster and you have to suck it up.
However, working within your limitations can be quite hard. I always knew my career was going to happen slowly but there are days when I wonder if it’s too slow. Is being an author like escaping the Earth’s gravitational field? Will it be impossible to escape the oceans of dross without rocket boosters? Will writing and producing books in slow motion render me a failure? Unless I achieve escape velocity will I be trapped here in the one sale a month club for eternity? Only time will tell but very probably yes. Then there’s the really evil one. Am I deluded? Have I, actually, written two shit books? Is that why they are only read after prolonged begging… or at gun point?
OK, so we’ll put the maudlin, self-pity back in the box now and think about what can be learned. What are the lessons here? What have I learned that might be useful to anyone else? Hmm. Well it’s these things:
- Something that applies to pretty much any endeavour in life. Avoid looking at other people’s output except to learn positive things, like what works for them that might work for you, that kind of stuff. NEVER compare someone else’s output to yours. That way madness lies. Switch off the internet if you have to but don’t do it. Set your own targets. Make them realistic in the framework of your life and your abilities and then stick to them – if you can. Should you hit them feel glad and when other people produce six times as much stuff in half the time, chill. Yes you may not be achieving the standard norm but you’re achieving something and that’s better than nothing.
- Don’t worry about other people’s sales figures – yes I am a fool, I’ve been to kindleboards again and depressed myself reading the threads about how well everyone’s doing. There will always be people doing better than you and for many of us it will be most people. This is the way of the world, if you have less time, people who have more will write more books, faster and achieve success faster. Embarrassingly, people who are way smarter than you will use less time than you have more wisely and write their books faster. Yes you will feel left behind. This is the harsh reality of life. Deal with it.
- Sometimes it will feel as if you are standing still and everyone is running past you and disappearing into the distance. Try not to think about it.
- Don’t start your writing career with a trilogy, or at least not unless you’re absolutely lulu. A series of stand alone books, yes, but a trilogy? No. Because a trilogy merely extends the first book angst for three books. That’s OK if you bash out a book every six months but if it takes you two years…? It’s been 16 years and counting. Mmm, I’m sure you get my point.
- Hard work begets success but unfortunately, so does luck and no amount of hard work will make up for that 1% of luck on top that puts you onto another level. This applies to anything. I’ve always had to make my own luck and to be honest, I’m piss poor at it! Phnark.
- Be patient; with your books and yourself. Yes Tom Petty was right, the waiting IS the hardest part. Aim to enjoy what you do and look upon anything else as gravy because however hard you work, the fairy dust may miss you.
So I reckon that’s some great advice, which I know and understand but seem to be pathologically unable to accept. Especially number 6. I think if I had the smallest modicum of patience, I wouldn’t be feeling quite so pessimistic. Or it could just be that it’s May and it’s sunny and although that’s absolutely lovely it does mean there’s a very high probability that it’s going to sodding tip it down for the rest of the year. If I’m not around so much it’ll be because I’m writing. I have to write because if I don’t finish my magnum opus this year, I fear I really will go crazy. After that it’s going to be short, commercially viable books. Oh yeh. No trilogies. Not ever, ever again.
Filed under General Wittering
Mini Man Says….
This afternoon, McMini approached me with his doctor’s kit and explained that he was going to ‘make me better’. He sat me down on the sofa with his medical case and protective knight’s helmet beside him and got to work. He selected the special looky-in-the-eary-thing. No idea what its technical name is.
“First I will look in your ear,” he says and proceeded to do so.
“Anything in there?” I asked him.
“No.”
“Do you need to look in the other one?”
“No, I saw right through to the other ear from this side.”
I admit I’m a bit of an airhead but not that much, surely. Then he gets out the reflex testing hammer.
“Now I must put on my hat to protect me if bits fly off your elbows. Please roll up your sleeves, Mummy.” He put on the knight helmet and proceeded to tap my elbows very gently with the hammer.
Then he listened to my tummy with the stethascope.
“Mmm. Your tummy is full of bugs. I will have to kill them.”
“Oh dear,” I said.
“Scissors,” he said holding them up. “Open wide.”
Other gems he has come out with include.
“Rain is like wee falling from the sky.”
“If you’re not careful you will get dirty and have purple skin and the purple won’t go away.”
“Turn the lights off please. Thank you. Look! I can see in the dark. It is because I have been eating lots of carrots. I have eaten so many carrots that soon my eyes will pop out and turn red like a dinosaur.”
He is very into dinosaurs at the moment. Last night, he squatted down, looking, to all intents and purposes, as if he was about to have a pooh and started to bounce slightly, humming as he did so. It looked as if he was doing the Mr-Whippy-having-a-crap-joke.
“What are you doing?” I asked, slightly bemused. He smiled up at me and said,
“I am laying my eggs.”
Later I found him squatting down humming but without moving.
“Hello Mummy. Now I am sitting on my eggs,” he told me.
Today we went to a Dr Who exhibition at my local museum. It was great. I’d like to go again, but I doubt I’ll make it. It’s only on for a week but there was a worksheet and a prize draw and I didn’t get to totally fill it in. Mwah ha hargh, no! Not for ME; for McMini.
At the end we spent a lot of time looking at a life size Dalek, one of the really early ones, pre my era (mine are the 73/74 ones). I came under heavy bombardment to buy one of the souvenir Dr Who action figures – the Daleks were well cool but £15 a pop – so I demurred and promised him one when we got home as I have a few spares in my collection of shame.
When we came home, McMini proudly told McOther about the ‘garlic’ he’d seen while I chortled into my hand. McOther didn’t seem to get it. I went and got a Dalek for McMini which he proudly rushed downstairs to show McOther. It was only then that the dear man realised what a ‘garlic’ was. He thought we’d been to the cook shop. Phnark.
Finally… he’s doing phonetics at the moment so he has a song about the letters c and k which he sings. He whispered it very quietly to me in church.
“Well done, that’s great,” I said when he’d finished.
“K, k, k, kite, kit, kate, can’t, CUNT!” he shouted. It was very innocent, he was just making noises but… hmm.
Never let it be said that having kids is dull!
Stop Press: He has just asked if I could show him some “pictures all about onions” on the computer.
“Onions?” I said. “Do you mean Daleks?”
“Yes! Garlics.”
Latest (20:30): Apparently he went upstairs to find McOther shouting, “Extra-erminate!”
He will kill me for this when he’s grown up… 😉
Filed under General Wittering
M T McGuire Authorholic 