Writing was meant for Winter ...
I don’t have writer’s block.
At least, I don’t think I do. Perhaps I have a mild dose of it, or whatever the literary equivalent is of feeling slightly under the weather. I can still write. I still have ideas. Far too many of them, in fact. But I think the time has come to pause for a little while.
I’m glad I gave myself a distant autumn or winter deadline for my next novel, because this one is proving much more difficult to write than the last. Perhaps summer has something to do with it. Writing may be one of my passions, but another is simply being outdoors and finding things to do in the garden.
Last year, we carried out a great deal of soft landscaping at the front of the house, where the housebuilders had made a spectacular mess of attempting to seed a lawn. This year, all that effort is paying off. There is glorious colour everywhere, and it is difficult to sit indoors staring at a screen when the garden is putting on its best performance just beyond the window.
Perhaps something else has changed too. The initial excitement of realising I’m an author and I can actually do this has settled into reality. Writing a book is no longer a thrilling leap into the unknown. I now understand what it involves: the thinking, the rewriting, the discarded passages, the stubborn chapters and the days when several hours of work produce one paragraph worth keeping.
My next book is also very different in style. It is still unmistakably British and still set in Redwick, but it is a more emotional story, focused on fewer characters whose lives are altered by an event none of them wanted. It needs more thought, more care and perhaps a little more patience from me. Some stories arrive almost fully formed. Others make you earn them.
The greatest temptation is to begin writing something else. On the whiteboard behind me are six ideas for future books. A seventh appeared this morning following a timely conversation with my boss. Two or three of them have already developed in my head into stories I am genuinely excited to write. Their characters are beginning to stir, their worlds are taking shape, and they keep tapping politely—then less politely—on the inside of my skull.
But they will have to wait.
Starting something new would give me the excitement of a blank page without the responsibility of finishing the difficult story already in front of me. I know myself well enough to recognise that temptation. If the next novel is going to become the complete, satisfying and enjoyable story I believe it can be, it deserves my full attention.
So perhaps this isn’t writer’s block at all. Perhaps it is simply part of being a writer: knowing when to push on, when to let a story breathe and when to go outside and pull a few weeds while the characters quietly sort themselves out.
Besides, I still have four months until my self-imposed deadline.
It should be ready before Christmas.
Probably.