Kate O'Brien

Monday, November 07, 2011

Books, the Blues and Writers Block

This post was written mid-October, but wasn't published as I've been too unwell to edit it. I thought I'd publish it anyway.

Writing is a precarious business.
You write well: all is well. You write, therefore you are a writer.
You write badly: you hide. You are not writing and so are not technically a writer at that time. 
You can't write: all is gone.You can no longer speak of yourself as a writer in the present tense.
The previous two weeks have been spent marketing Driftwood & Amethyst and preparing the bones of a book signing tour. I've also been prepping an outline for a rather strange children's novel set in our world and an otherworld. I've rather neglected my daily burst of fiction, although I have written two short stories so that's not entirely true!
My medication this last couple of weeks has too undertaken a change. As the weather has turned colder and wetter, I've needed to up my morphine dose which seems to stifle my creativity and require me to sleep more each day. It's the worst. I live in a complete fog, feel far too cold and spend my days wrapped up in a rather tatty Tintin jumper over a carefully chosen co-ordinated outfit.
I'm hoping I'll develop tolerance of this new dose nice and quickly so I can get back to my writing.
Even writing this is like wading through treacle! Life is an uphill struggle but at least I'm warm in my house with  cups of tea and jammy dodgers. 

I'm focusing on building my characters for my next novel as I like to get to grips with those as early as I can. Reading an Andrew Miller article in the Guardian today, he suggests that developing characters fully is key to a great novel - and references great character writers such as Dickens, Wilde and Austen. Readers forget plots but they remember memorable characters.I'm building the grim ones first as they're more fun!

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