Posts

‘The book is too perfect to disappear. Bookstores are fading, but there are also bookstores surviving.’ Annie Proulx

‘Living in a flat in the city it is almost impossible to have a sense of connection to place’ Tim Flannery

‘a still–Volcano–Life’ Lyndall Gordon quoting Emily Dickinson

‘the frontiers of consciousness, where words fail, but meaning still exists’ Lyndall Gordon quoting T.S. Eliot in his essay ‘The Music of Poetry’ (1941)

‘We don’t need more intelligence, we need more empathy.’ Tim Flannery

‘Depression is the refusal to mourn.’ Dorothy Rowe

‘We have a brief period of historical co-existence [between the book and the e-book] that is almost over as we speak.’ Geordie Williamson

‘Books are how I learned to manage solitude.’ Lev Grossman

‘Gaelle learns she doesn’t have to accept the gifts that have been bequeathed to her, but the worst thing is to remain silent. “Sometimes the stories that have to be told are the hidden ones.”’ Natasha Lester, talking about her book, What is Left Over, After

‘There’s a paradoxical unity of past, present and future. They are all ghosts. The present is always abandoning us.’ Jon Bauer

‘Give oneself permission not to know where something is going, and try to find the strength in that.’ Gail Jones on writing

‘If the past is where the pain is, visiting the past is also where the healing is… healing is the hand I want to hold to walk boldly into the future.’ Jon Bauercol-md-2

Book pages 1An older version of this blog also appeared on the Random House ‘Random Blogs’ website on 8th April 2010

For me, for a long time my writing was my hobby, and as such I would get through everything else first, promising myself writing time later, as some kind of reward. However, it’s far too easy for that time to never arrive. It was only when I dedicated myself to finishing Come Back to Me at the end of 2007 that I really made the strides forward that I needed to then pursue publication. Now I do try to schedule time to write, but it’s not always easy. I have an active one-year-old little girl, all the general aspects of life to keep going, and my husband would quite like some attention sometimes too, I think. I have just finished my second book, and managed it by making the most of the time my little girl was asleep or my husband was here to care for her, as well as having the help of a wonderful childminder for a few hours a week. (Also invaluable was a well-timed visit by my mother!) Although I used to write at all hours of the day, for now I have to make the most of this dedicated, limited time. I usually have lots of scribbled notes to work through by the time each session comes around, as when I’m busy on other things I still make sure to make notes on ideas so that I can refer back to them later.

As with many other writers, it may well be necessary for me to continue my day job of editing to make a living. Then I will not only have to remind myself to make time for my writing, but to work hard to make sure that time actually happens. When the task at hand seems enormous, I also remind myself to just make a start, and that if I keep doing that every day, one day I’ll reach the finish line! And, if I don’t find the time I need, I may have to look hard at the things I am making time for. I once heard a popular fiction writer in England talking about how if you just turned off EastEnders, a prime-time soap opera that runs for half an hour four nights a week, and used the time to write, in six months you would have a book.  It’s worth thinking about.col-md-2