Saturday 18 July 2015

Keeping the pilot light burning

Although I'm in a fallow period, I think about my book a lot. I feel a bit like a guilty mum who has left her child with someone else for far too long...

Reading writing magazines keeps my appetite whetted and I'm reading widely as well as revisiting old favourites, trying to feed my creativity. I will soon have to decide whether to take up precious packing space in my suitcase with my manuscript and notebooks, or whether to take a full break. I'm also trying to work out child-care and brace myself to spend the money to go to Swanwick Writing School for one day...

Even when you're not writing, you can be working on self-improvement, and chasing those dreams. But I have to be careful not to use that as a safe excuse - a cosy comfort-zone that is an easier place than actually wrestling with plot and structure, how likeable characters are; staring into the face of the possibility that the whole thing has more holes than a sieve and is beyond redemption.

Perhaps that answers the question of whether I should take the manuscript on holiday. I'm pretty sure that it's not going to improve itself...