Keep Calm

Distractions. They are everywhere. They are the writer’s worst enemy. Someone said that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. It’s all hard work and keeping at it. An updated version of this quote was that genius was 1% inspiration and 99% avoiding the Internet. Keep writing, they tell us. Write daily.

But sometimes it’s not quite that simple. Work gets in the way and there is nothing we can do about it. We all need to pay our bills and buy milk for our babies. If we have no babies and need no milk, then we need to buy a computer every few years, a software to write on and coffee. Lots of coffee.

Then there is the self-inflicted time-eating stuff we subject ourselves to. Our attic needed attention. We had the dormers replaced and have spent the last few days building a laundry room. A typical day has been waking up at 4:30, being at work at 6:00, home at 15:00, hammering until 19:00, dinner and sleep a couple of hours later. Not that I like to go to bed early. I am a late-night person at heart. But days like this make it hard to sit on a sofa and stay awake.

Needless to say, any writing has been put on hold. I could possibly find an hour here and there, but there is no point. Writing when exhausted results in drivel, useless garbage that will need to be heavily edited later.

But all is not lost. Inspiration struck me a couple of days ago. I typed my incredible prose on the iPhone, only to find that it had watered a bit. As great as the device is, it isn’t the best way to write anything more than a simple message. A Little Black Book would have been better. So I’ll go and get me one. Technology may be fantastic, but its not the answer to everything. In fact, I recently found a twenty-year old book I had scribbled in. One page had info on a detective and it inspired me to make The Girl from Nowhere. Old scribbles can be a gold mine, inspiring and fun to read.

And when the attic is done, I will have a cosy and inspiring den where I can spend all those non-DIY hours writing my next masterpiece.

And so I don’t cry for the days and hours spent on home improvement. Yes, they are delaying the completion of my novel, but I will end up with a nice little place where I can sit in a comfy chair, burn incense and look out the large window at the clouds as I write sentence after sentence.

Or so I tell myself.