I haven’t been writing this month.
In the last twenty-four days, I have written 103 words. 62 on an old story I planned to pick up, and the rest on a novel I can’t really start yet, as my attempted outline revealed serious flaws I haven’t yet figured out.
The short story due in June sits patiently waiting for me to complete it.
Yet each day I can, I’ve logged onto my laptop and pulled up some form of writing document: be it an old novel I want to add to, the new idea to try figuring out the issues, or my “novel seeds” file of ideas. I’ve read transcripts of the first series of Writing Excuses podcast, which leaves only two series left for me to catch up on (I started going backwards and reached series 4 last year).
So I’m preparing: learning and taking notes. I’m re-reading old works and trying to work out where to take the next step. It’s not as though I’ve given up or stopped trying. I’ve just hit a wall and rather than jumping up at it, I’ve stood back to work out a route.
It’s not that I don’t feel like writing, it’s that I don’t know what to write where. I try to just ‘start anything, write rubbish’ and yet, my hands just hover above the keyboard, waiting for words that never come.
It’s frustrating. The evenings I would spend writing have dwindled to procrastination, and my self-set deadlines loom a little closer. I speak to other writers who are slowly but surely making forward progress, and while I’ve done a lot of reading and thinking, I’m pretty much where I was 24 days ago.
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Today, I’m hoping to pick a project, and at least make some progress to it. Anything to break from this cycle that’s starting to become a habit. I need to be writing fiction, in some form or other.