I never thought I would suffer in this way, but it's been coming on for a long time. Writing just gets harder every day.
I used to be able to roll off a chapter of a novel, 2000 words or so, in one day, with enormous enthusiasm. I used to feel a thrill of excitement every time I sat down at the computer and tear myself away with enormous reluctance when I had to go and pick up children from school or whatever. So what's changed? And what's happened to all those novels I wrote? They're gathering dust on floppy discs, on top of the filing cabinet, in what used to be the computer room in the days when we used to have a desktop computer, in the spare bedroom, you know, in the way people used to. Underneath them are two ring binders contained about 100,000 words of a novel about space exploration which I inscribed in pencil on A4 pads (when there wasn't really any viable alternative). I wrote that novel with passion too.
So, let's ask the question again. What happened to all these novels? Not a lot.
A few were sent to publishers, three word processed chapters and a synopsis. Every few months, when the family were out, I would have a cull of these sad self-addressed envelopes, their contents pinned together with the publisher's standard rejection slip. Most of them didn't even get that far, although my novel for teenagers about football was recorded on cassette tape by a fellow writer in Scotland - Alex Frew, bless him - and played to blind kids in Scotland. The sequel was not so fortunate as the Wee Frees objected on moral grounds to mc sleeping with steady girlfriend before marriage... er, once.
Over the past three years, I have been writing flash and short stories, with a moderate degree of success. The quality of my writing has matured in many ways, because I have posted my work on Writers Dock and Chapter SeventyNine and received a great deal of valuable feedback from members, whereas previously no one was reading my work at all, let alone reviewing and suggesting edits. I now have a much lower opinion of myself as a writer, but I know I'm writing better.
I've also been writing a novel about the Cold War since 2008 and I'm only midway through. It's been stop-start, two steps forward and one step back ever since, short stories, several OU courses and a lot of handouts on how to use various IT applications. Back in 2007-8, the story coursed through my head night and day, actually keeping me awake for whole nights, and I was desperate to get it down... without doing the necessary research, or developing the whole of the plot, or thinking through the characters. Now I understand the characters very well and the plot has remained the same for a long time... in my head. But I'm doing well if I write a chapter about every month.
So Dear Reader (and Allie assures me there is at least one), my plan now is to concentrate on The Novel and forget about writing shorts until I've finished. I belong to something called Five Outstanding on Chapter Seventy-Nine in which you commit to having five subs on the go at any one time, but I think I can continue to keep that up by recycling rejections - unless I suddenly get a rash of acceptances.
No more excuses then. I just wish I could write with abandon and absorption like before.
