Monday 1 June 2009

Writer's Block? Nar.. more like Writer's "Meh"...


My WIP - tentatively titled "Clowns to the Left" - has amassed 72,000 words. Something I started on 12th February this year, has used up 9,774 minutes of my life and has undergone 77 revisions. (love the 'properties' icon - great tool for any slightly OCD tendencies and of course a great procrastinatory tool). Now I've got through the heady beginnings and lain my foundations, shot headlong into the cut and thrust of the whole shebang and peered about at the carnage that my idea has wreaked... I am now either bored with the whole thing or scared of it all ending.
I just can't seem to whip up any enthusiasm for it any longer.
I read back and still love my characters even though one is a spineless arrogant user who's sleeping with his wife's best friend (not my usual fluffy chicklit thang). But all I seem to want to do is start a new one. And I've already written the first 600 words of it, too.
All I can see in my mind is my mother waggling her finger of disappointment at me and saying "you always start something and never see it through, young lady, that's your trouble." Gulp.
Mind you, she'd never have believed I'd already written two novels. But then she wouldn't have thought they 'counted' as they're not proper, published books. Pleasing my mother was always the most difficult thing in the world to get right. So why should I care now she's no longer around?
It's that still, small voice of dejection, isn't it? The one that says 'you're just wasting time you could otherwise be spending in more useful pursuits, like gardening, housekeeping, wife-ing, mother-ing, working...' things that were important to her.
Writing is important to me. And were it not for the fact that I thankfully belong to porbably the best writer's group in the universe, I would cheerfully be following Susan Boyle into the nearest Hotel for the Marginally Misunderstood clutching my not-the-full-ticket as I go.
I'll get over it. I always do. It's the getting through it that's the toughie.

2 comments:

Fionnuala said...

Oh Debs, join the club! And yeah you do belong to the best writers group in the universe! I'm sure this is probably worrying about how to finish it rather than not wanting to. I've hit 94,000 words and I reckon I have another five to go (the the EDIT!)to finish it but I am PROCRASTINATING like never before. I know its becasue I'm scared about whether or not the ending I'm going to write is the right one for the story so welcome to a meh moment from London.... It'll pass. We know that, they always do. SO as I say to Claire always, Chin up, t**s out and move on. x

Debs Riccio said...

Thanks Fi, I'll do just that round Sainsburys in a minute and see how much better I feel afterwards!