I used to believe that writing was a somewhat rarefied
activity. The writer waited for the Muse to call and then fired with
inspiration and vision they wrote pages of perfect prose for a rapt and waiting
audience.
Unsurprisingly, this meant I never wrote anything at all,
despite vague mutterings about writing a novel sometime, while I waited for
this mythic moment of creation to arrive.
More recently, I decided that writing; the actual task of
producing words on paper or a screen is far more akin to training for an
endurance race or a particularly vicious contact sport than the delicate
posturing on a chaise longue that I had always visualised.
And actually, that, the linking of writing and sport was a
light bulb moment for me.
Sport requires training, repetition, building of stamina,
acquiring of technical skills. It means running on cold wet February evenings
to get in the miles, it means early mornings to fit in a gym visit before work,
but most of all, it means doing it [whatever the it is] day after day after day
to see improvement.
Armed with this changed mind-set, I made a commitment in May
2012 to write something every day and set up a blog to give some structure to
this project and because I have re-framed writing as training, I have also
taken away the creative strait jacket of having to produce good work. The only criterion
is that I produce some work every day.
My internal editor, the little voice that is quick to
criticise and the great displacement activity organiser have been firmly kicked
into touch, after all the focus is on doing, on having a go.
My writing is the literary equivalent of a fun runner
preparing for the London Marathon, it’s not pretty, and it’s never going to be
stylish or set the world on fire but the act of daily writing , like daily
running, makes completion a far more likely outcome.
I’m using the blog like a sketch book, everything from the
written equivalent of a scribbled sketch to a fully worked up short story or a
chapter of a novel in progress is posted
up for anyone to see.
So, seven months into the project, I have pretty much kept
to the original commitment and like a slowly fittening runner, there are days,
more and more of them, when I can see a tiny
improvement, a touch more technical ability, a slightly better sentence.
I wish, that, ten, twenty years ago, when I thought about
writing, that I had done less thinking and more writing.
With that many writing miles under my belt, I might have
been almost competent by now.
Visit the blog – www.rubiesandduels.wordpress.com
