The Writing Doldrums

 

 It’s been a busy last two weeks.  On the plus side, I won a National Arts Merit Award for Best Fiction for All Come To Dust.  I was extremely happy.  This is the second award the book has won since its publication roughly a year and a half ago.                                                 On the downside, I am unsettled.  Overwhelmed is a better word. I don’t know how to get myself out of this particular writing rut.  My problem is not an uncommon one for me, although this time it seems to be more heightened than usual. 

              I tend to set myself unrealistic goals and even more unrealistic deadlines. This result is that nothing happens.  At the end of last year, I began working on finishing some short stories I had begun.  Then, just before Christmas, I decided to work on a young adult’s novel about a reformed drug addict who takes over an old departmental store and restore it to its former glory.  Recently, I began another crime novel and I also have edits to make on my completed novel, The Dying of the Light. On top of this, there are all the stories I have in my head.  I have a plan for a book of short stories that revolve around a house and plans for other crime novels, one of which I have started. 

             Whenever I start one thing, I get a feeling that I should be doing something else and so I hop around between projects. More than that, I find reasons not to write: a cupboard needs cleaning out, the car needs to be washed, I really, really need to re-pot that African Violet right now.  Procrastination is the name of the game.

             I do this with everything.  If I decide I am going to get fit, I plan an unlikely schedule of an early morning run, followed by a lengthy swim and an hour’s worth of yoga.  Needless to say, I don’t get beyond the front gate.  I used to read three books at a time – and not finish one of them.  I once made a resolution to spend twenty minutes a day writing in my diary and twenty minutes meditating and twenty minutes gardening.  It is no wonder then that one diary of mine can contain five years’ worth of entries and my method of gardening is best known as ‘come to me and die’.

             So, what to do about it?  Yes, I know.  Keep it simple.  Prioritise. Decide what needs to be done first and do it – completely.  And forget deadlines.  The pressure comes only from myself, no one else.

           There are few sensations more pleasurable for a writer than a finished manuscript.  The hours, the effort and the loneliness have all paid off.  You think back to how it all started with that one word, that one sentence, that one time you sat down and said: right, I am going to write this book. Yet, it didn’t really start there; it started way beforehand with the thoughts and ideas, followed by the cleaning of the cupboard and the car, the re-potting of the African Violet. Somehow all of it is necessary until that final focus is found.

                What I really wish is that someone would give me a deadline.  I am good at working under pressure, but the pressure has to come from someone else. Really, I think I just need an all expenses paid holiday – and about $100 000.  I think I could write anything then.  Anyone feeling generous?