It was an
unlikely goal even before November came. 50,000 words in a month of starting a
new job, Christmas shopping and worrying sick over a terribly ill cat. It was an unlikely goal, to say the least. At the end of October I was still editing book two, right up
to the wire on Halloween. I reached the end, sure, goal achieved, but it was a
total rush and I know that both the quality of the story and my involvement
with the characters suffered as a result.
November came,
but the story did not. Once I had written the prologue, which was clear in my
mind, there was nothing else clear in my mind to write. I knew where the
characters all were, and I knew where they were going, but I couldn’t quite see
how and when to get them there. I still can’t.
It is not
writer’s block. It is a thinking block. I have always done the key parts of my
writing by thinking.
My life now has
a commute where before it had a few minutes walk to and from work each day. My
home now is a houseful of people where before it was nothing but the quiet hum
of trains and the call of birds in the sky. My life had lie-ins where now it
has a constant wake up call.
My life now has noise where before it had that
special kind of quiet in which stories are made. My lifestyle has changed, and
the things I love doing, and the stories I write, have suffered for it.
So writing
50,000 words in November did not happen. It was never really going to –
psyching myself up to do it was my way of clinging to something normal,
something that is familiar and something that has before been so natural and so
easy. I did not write, and much as I tried to find the story, I did not. It has
never worked that way for me; it has never been forced.
I definitely
need a rest. My mind is exhausted from the lack of opportunity to put my
thoughts and feelings in order and my body is exhausted from lack of good,
peaceful sleep and from lugging around my disordered mind. I wish for calm, and
quiet. I wish for time and space. I wish for that moment when I glance out of a
window or up at the sky and find the perfect clarity that is the next part of the
story.
So I tell
myself, in those moments when I hate the lack of word count, that two books out
of three is not at all bad, and the third will be all the better for the rest.
Sometimes life gets in the way. That is just the way it is.
Elloise Hopkins.
