Patience

The end will come

Most of the time, procrastination is the enemy (and favourite pastime) of the writer. Sometimes, though, it can be useful, especially when coming towards the end of a book, when there is a temptation to override the will of the characters, and rush to an end that then is overhurried, which doesn’t allow the gathering of all loose threads and ends, and ends up being just a headlong rush into self-destruction.

So, with The Mortality Code, I’m trying to be patient, however painful a process this is proving to be, and one which is seriously affecting my mental health to the extent that I feel like I’m sitting on my hands and not being as productive as I should be as a writer. And that, of course, brings with itself a renewal of doubts and self-questioning and self-editing and self-castigation. I am desperate for it to end, because I have other things I want to be doing, but daren’t touch at this juncture. Sleep has gone out of the window while puzzling over this.

At least the daily poem (on my main blog) is some sort of release for this inner tension, this building conflict between form and substance (because that is what it ends up being). And today I went to a (very poor) football game at Norwich City, which ratcheted up the feeling of discomfort and discontent rather than calming it (although why I should expect anything else from a very mediocre team is another one of those mysteries best not even probed).

This seems to be turning into a weekly meditation on my own writing. So be it.

To close - if anyone read last week’s post and asked themselves how a writer who claims to be led by his characters whould be restructuring a novel; characters do sometimes get it wrong and go off in directions where there will only ever be a dead end, and if the restructuring guides and informs them, or is the result of them having second thoughts about what they’d been thinking of doing, then it’s a perfectly valid exercise for the writer to undertake. At least that’s what I tell myself.