I’ve learned a truth: you’ll never get around to doing anything unless you make time for it. Do you want to organise your bookshelves according to tropes? Do you long to become ambidextrous? Investigate the lifecycles of newts? Have regular conversations with your local oak tree? (Don’t. You’ll receive several bemused looks.) (Or do.) Do you want to write a book?
Make time for it.
You don’t need a study overlooking the sea. You don’t need a smoking jacket or a typewriter or a special sort of paper or a desk shaped like a whale. (Though … that would be amazing and if anyone has one going SIGN ME UP!)
BASIC REQUIREMENTS:
You
Something to write with (ink/a functioning computer/word processor/paper etc etc)
Determination
You’ll very rarely have a perfect afternoon to while away in a different world, or an entire weekend free of worry with brilliant weather just right to write with.
Writing can be done in a spare fifteen minutes tapping away at the keyboard. Writing can done scribbling away on your lunch-break. Writing can done when you’re tired, when you’re stressed, just before bed, just before breakfast.
It can be ten words, a hundred words, perhaps even a thousand (or two!). It isn’t always magical, it’s not secretive and it’s decidedly not glamorous.
It’s the simplest thing which is somehow the hardest – setting down one word after the other. Planting your bottom in a chair, stretching your hands over the keyboard, taking a breath, and diving into the words.
Five minutes. Ten. Or heck – even half an hour. It doesn’t matter for how long, the important thing is: you’re doing it.
Waiting for the perfect time, the perfect moment, and the perfect day doesn’t work. They don’t arrive. They’re stuck in the pipeline. Caught in the ever elusive ‘tomorrow’.
Make time. Cram words into the cracks and little pieces of the day you’d otherwise fill with reddit, youtube, Instagram, or a thousand other things.
I’ve been blogging for a while now (‘a while’ because I’d rather not think about how long I have been blogging on various blogs. It makes me feel old.) and I have favourite blogs that I’ve followed over the years. Here are some of them …
This blog was born from that wonderful time when the Scarlet Pimpernel was all the rage in the blogging community [that I stalked]. It seems to have slowly faded away, alas. But sometimes these things do ‘appen. (Yes. That is a Phantom reference.)
BLOG STATUS: a faded dream …
EDIT: It comes to my blushing attention, that I’ve actually managed to make a general kerfuffle of things – whilst I originally put ‘SINK ME!‘where humorous nonsense meets period drama’ as the blog name and link here … I actually meant The Day Dream. Sink Me! is still an active blog. And my extremely humble apologies goes out to the author. Absent mindedness, thy name is Ness.
I read and even participated in some (or rather, one) events on this blog. But I am no longer a teen and feel:
a) discriminated against
b) left out
Like, Go ‘Teen’ Writers? C’mon. I just feel like, so offended. Ageism is CLEARLY at play here.
BLOG STATUS: still going but I don’t read it as much because I am now a grumpy old codger.
[DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT RESENT THE TEEN WRITERS. NAY. I WISH THEM WELL AND ALL THE BEST. I RESENT TIME AND THE WAY ONE FALLS OUT OF DEMOGRAPHICS AND INTO HORRIBLE THINGS LIKE BILLS AND TAXES]
I read this one and the blog belonging to Miss Dashwood’s sister. But I think the sister’s blog is no more and Yet Another Period Drama has slowly had less and less postings.
Now, I know – it’s easy to suspect foul play here; to think that if a blogger doesn’t post they have been killed by resentful otters, but one hopes that the reason the blogger is not blogging is because they are living fulfilling and busy lives.
Which I think is Miss Dashwood’s case; she has – it appears – either gone into ring/hand modelling or has gotten engaged. (In which case, I wish her a hearty congratulations and all the very, very best.)
Rachel Heffington has evolved into a food writer and recipe developer but I was there in her novel writing days (HIPSTER ALERT) and my word, did Anon, Sir, Anon come out in 2014?!! Where has the time flown?!!
I remember when her very first book came out – I bought a copy and took it up into the Peak District to take pictures of, because I wanted Heffington to have sort of visited England, if only by proxy.
one of my favourite places in the world
#prebookstagramdays
Her author blog was quirky and witty and I loved to read it. Occasionally, I hold a moment of silence over the blog’s silence. (I kid.)
I think it was Rachel Heffington who first introduced me to Wodehouse – at the time I didn’t quite ‘get it’ – it would be a while before the penny dropped – but … now I have and for that, I am ever in your debt, Rachel Heffington.
BLOG STATUS: author has moved on to bigger, brighter, and more edible things
If I ever want to feel intellectually stimulated, I head over to Suzannah Rowntree’s blog. She writes delicious reviews and if ever I spot she’s reviewed one of my previous reads, you can be sure I put aside everything I’m doing to devour it.
I may not be enamoured with everything she says (she did not take to the characters in Behold, Here Is Poison by my beloved Heyer which I *cough* slightly resent because Randall Matthews is the cat’s meow and I defy everyone who says otherwise. NO I AM NOT BIASED) but her reviews are always terribly interesting.
BLOG STATUS: posting on
THERE ARE MORE …
… there are so many questions to answer – who is a fellow Sutcliff reader? Who addressed the importance of red shoes? Who had the grabbiest post titles? Who LIKES K-DRAMAS TOO?!!! Who reads and writes far, far too fast? And – and this is the most important one – who introduced me to the wonders of Georgette Heyer?
This warrants another blog post. (Which will not be as tardy as this one. Probably.)
of words & books 