So. Am supposed to have proffered some more writing this week for the writing group, Just One Sentence. But have not written anything for months, God, when was the last time I wrote anything? One word would be good, never mind a whole sentence.
It’s this planning thing, structuring it all out, inciting incidents, premises, scene goals; they’re all doing my head in. I print out all the help-sheets in the world and I can follow the logic of the theory and maybe I even believe it all. And then Thursdays come around and I teach it on to new creative writing learners.
My old career was packed full of processes, practices and pragmatism. And yet, yet, they don’t help me one iota. They completely stymie my ‘creative flow’, as if that concept is something I might have been blessed with. Those aide memoirs for me need to come after the first draft, once I’ve written the story through. I can then analyse every chapter, scene, word until those Appenzeller bovines trip down the hillside, I can hear their clunking bells as I tap tap away.
I need to just sit down somewhere else and hide away and write. Maybe some days at mum’s would be good, although choosing the piccies to support this piece has enflamed my desire to go and write in the north east of Switzerland once more. I know what I have written so far so I need to get on and fill any obvious gaps and start to write more of it out. It’s going to be a long novel this one as I have four characters’ stories to write through.
Each Thursday I tend to have one slide of writing quotes. Last week I read Murakami’s Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage so I chose some quotes from the man. There it sat, my style of writing, When I start to write I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.
Time to get cracking.
