Writer's Block

On Twitter, you'll see people talk about what they are writing, or simply inform the world, unfascinatingly, that they are writing. They use the hashtag #amwriting.

This is a hashtag that I have rarely been able to use in the last couple of years. You (most of you) didn't know this but I have been suffering from writer's block. And don't let anyone tell you it doesn't exist, only that they have not experienced it. (And it is completely different from hating your job or not wanting to go to work or not wanting to start a task. It is something peculiar to those who need the emotional parts of their brain working properly for their work - writers, artists, musicians.)

The block does not have to be a brick wall, just ugly sludge, preventing free flow, causing a grim trickle. Sometimes, you do force words through the sludge, because if you're a professional you just have to do it, but it doesn't feel like writing. Not really. I have been performing to order for two years and hating almost every minute of it. And feeling ashamed of hating it. Yes, I've written words - I even wrote a novel - but it was a horrible process.

I know the reasons for this. You don't need to know the reasons. Let's just say, "Stuff happened." The stuff began in January 2010, and continued for over a year. It was stuff that was sufficient to rock me. It speared me in the part of my brain that allows creativity. And for a while that part was almost completely paralysed. I could blog, tweet, speak, plan, campaign, but not write fiction.

None of that matters, because now I truly #amwriting.

Conversation with my husband this morning:

Me: I need to warn you about something.
Mr M (looks worried): Ye-es?
Me: You know that thing I used to do when I was really into the book I was writing?
Mr M (After a short struggle to remember): You mean when you won't answer questions and you go all silent and get up early in the morning and suddenly say odd things in the middle of a meal? And you're sometimes grumpier than usual?
Me: Yes, that.
Mr M: What about it?
Me: It's happening now.
Mr M: Good!
Me: What, you don't mind?
Mr M: Is it going to make any money?
Me: Actually, rather possibly. You never know.
Mr M: Well, about time, too.

Indeed.

What am I writing? I'll tell you soon! It is very exciting for me, and I have not written the words "writing" and "exciting" in the same paragraph for a long time.

This blog post would be self-indulgent if I didn't have some advice for you. Here it is.
Creative* writing relies heavily on the emotional parts of our brain: the limbic system. The things that cause writer's block are those that overwhelm that emotional limbic system: grief, shock, anger, stress, hate, fear. Those things take so much of the limbic system's power that there is none left to fuel and allow the writing. Every time you try to access the emotional parts, they are busy grieving or being angry or going over and over and over the emotion of whatever it is that is happening to you and around you.

[*By "creative" I don't only mean fiction; I feel that good non-fiction needs to access the emotional part, too, though not so heavily, and depending on what it is.]

That is what happened to me. Every time I tried to get into that limbic writing state, emotions from the "stuff" intruded. I lay awake at night full of the wrong emotion, the negative thoughts. The writer in me had been used to lying awake thinking of plots and having conversations with my characters; the blocked, stressed, angry me couldn't. Every time I tried, the other stuff raged.

It is hardly surprising that when emotions overwhelm us, we cannot also write. Except perhaps write about those emotions - which is perhaps why sometimes people can write during depression. (Depression was not what I had, by the way.)

So, if this is happening to you, what to do about it?

Give yourself time for the cause of emotional overload to dissipate and lessen. It will. How quickly that happens and what (if anything) you can do to speed it depends on the cause and on how deeply it has troubled you. You may not be able to rush it. But everything passes and one day you will find that you want to write.

But, and here's the important thing: you may not be able to. When you find you still can't write at the point when you feel you should be able to, you will doubt yourself, your very core. This is when you need to act. Now you need to coax your battered creative brain back into life, and I'm afraid no one will do it for you.

Give your brain three things:

1. Time to think. Not about your stupid job or stuff or tasks or lists. But ideas, characters, scenes, words, stories. Time on your own, with no one talking to you. Make that time. No one will give it to you if you don't give it to yourself. It's something to fight for. Fight those around you and fight yourself.

2. Light, air and the great outdoors. Our brains are more creative when we are in big, high spaces and can see far into the distance (preferably a green, natural distance.) Go walking. Alone. Breathe. Give your brain oxygen, literally and metaphorically.

3. Desire. You have to want it enough. You have to remember that this is what gives you heartsong. Remember heartsong? If not, you need to read Write to be Published, the bit at the end, the bit that everyone writes to me about.

Give it those things and bit by bit your battered, comatose, creative brain will slowly waken and strengthen and you will write again. The heartsong will return and you will remember once more how it feels to be a writer. You will be a writer again.

(PS If you're interested in what I said about the brain being more creative in big spaces, see here. But come back and comment here because I won't see comments over there!)

ANYONE FOR NANOWRIMO??

Any of you participating in NaNoWriMo this year? Do you even know what it is?? To find out, and to find out about my experiences, read how I blogged about it after doing a private version with some other children's writers and then check out the official site.


When I did my Nanowrimo, I found it very positively challenging and interesting. It was tiring, sometimes frantic, but it energised rather than exhausted me. If you decide to join in the international one, PLEASE let us know how you get on. But do prepare for it  -  you must be at the right place in a piece of writing or idea and may need to make some alterations to your routines. You'll probably need to stock up on coffee and chocolate, too.

I'm not doing the official one, because I am not in the right place and, besides, one thing I learnt was that I could do it myself, or perhaps with a friend  -  a "writing buddy". What it mostly does is force you to find time to write, nagged  -  sorry, encouraged  -  by other people. It puts writing at the top of your to-do list (where it should already be for me but often isn't); it challenges your perceptions of what you can do, your habits and your entrenched beliefs in the writing process. All those things are good.

It's something you'll love or hate. It could change your life, or at least your writing life. And for many of us, that's the biggest part we want to change.

Even if you don't do a NaNoWriMo, do consider buying this fabulous book. It's genuinely eye-opening, and I say that as someone not addicted to self-help books or books that claim to sort out my life:

And if you'd like to swing
a few pennies my way
in doing so,
please buy it through this link.

THAT WASN'T MEANT TO HAPPEN + THANK YOU

Further to my last post about permission not to write and motivation and stuff, my agent has lost her normal excellent judgement and decided that my reluctant first two chapters of my very difficult WIP are "bloody good writing". This is very bad news as I had hoped to doss around for the next few months. I'd suspect she'd been drinking if it wasn't for the fact that it was rather early in the morning and that she's never shown any other signs of a drink problem. Maybe that's the problem  -  not enough.

Also, I'm going to even busier because Mrs Smith and I have plans for world domination. Mind you, her most recent suggestion indicates that she's been drinking, too. Does this happen to everyone I have dealings with? It's really rather sad. There's me remaining stoically sober and everyone else is hitting the bottle.

But I really wanted to say thank you to all you wonderful blog readers because, as one commenter [Rebecca] on the last post said, "I love that the commenters provide a fascinating discussion even after the post is done." You all help to make this blog worth writing, and I hope worth reading. See, I'm going all sentimental in the extremity of my stress. That and having had an accident yesterday while out walking and coming into painfully close contact with the branch of a tree which really shouldn't have been there. I now have two large cuts on my forehead and two on my scalp, which took a bit of explaining and ouching when I had my hair done today.

But, wonderful as you blog-readers are and contributory as you may be to the value of this blog, I warn you, if I ever make any money from it you're having none of it. Not a sou.

Meanwhile, I would like to give you advance warning that in recognition of your collective wondrousness and that there seem to be no deluded idiots amongst you now that the troll has gone back in its cave, I am going to invite you to a virtual coffee morning this coming Friday  -  25th Sept. It's unofficially part of the Macmillan Biggest Coffee Morning in the World and is in aid of Macmillan Cancer Nurses.

I'll tell you about it tomorrow [when I've worked it out]  -  and any of you with blogs are hugely welcome to join in and do the same or similar.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, I hope my agent is having a large glass of wine this evening. She doesn't deserve it but I prescribe it for her. Gah, agents!

WHY DO I WRITE AT ALL?

Look, I know Emily Gale and I are both YA authors but does that mean she gets to read my mind?? She's just blogged in partial response to my blog post [below] about writing habits, which was in response to her blog post about writing locations, and her new post is about writing and not writing, and permission not to write, which is what I was going to blog about next.

The question of whether to write at all (which is not exactly what Emily is talking about) is something close to my heart at the moment as I've been thinking about why I write. One thing's for certain: it's often so damned painful that you'd think we'd only do it if there was a huge reward.

In a recession which is hitting all forms of written word, and in which it's harder and harder to make a living, the question of why we write becomes more crucial and more practical. Because it's sure as hell the case that the reward is most unlikely to be financial. It never was a safe route to financial stability but I hardly know an author who's already small writing income hasn't fallen. Mine has and it's really getting to me and leading to some soul-searching.

Why do we write?
A mixture of things, of course, and different motives for different people. Different at different times of our careers, too. Which brings me to myself. I tell you about myself not because I think I'm interesting but because I'm the only person I'm fully qualified to talk about. Maybe some of these things will resonate with you. If you're at a different career stage from me, maybe you can look ahead [or back] and see if you're on the same road.

When I was struggling for years and years to get published, writing for money was no part of my motivation. Not that I was going to rip a cheque up, you understand, but I'd have done it for nothing. In fact, when I did get my first [unagented] contract I wept for joy while they walked all over me in pointy shoes.

What did I want from my writing then? Why did I wreck my mental state just to pursue the dream?

It couldn't have been simply that I loved writing, needed it to feed my soul, though both those were true. I was already writing, a lot, and easily - if it was just about writing, publication wouldn't have mattered so much.

Or was it simply seeing my name in print? Not exactly, because I could have self-published or gone down the vanity route.

It was two** things. First, I wanted to be able to say those words, "I am an author." Second, since I thought I was a good enough writer to be published, I needed to be publicly affirmed as that. I suppose, on my dreamy days, I was also attracted to the idea of a little bit of "fame", [really just a little bit - so I could still be grumpy and poorly dressed in Sainsbury's]. You could also say that since I'd been a very shy child who hated performing, but that I'd loved it when someone else read my words and was moved by them, then being published was my way of performing.

(** or three, as I just realised this morning, and added at the end of the post.)

But now? I've got all that - I got published; I wouldn't call myself famous, but in my own genre I'm sufficiently known, I think; people recognise me for my shoes, which was beyond my wildest dreams; I even love performing in public now and am established enough that I get as many invitations as I want; and I am proud enough of what you might call my "body of work" - apologies for pomposity but I'm being honest here. I have probably done better than I had ever thought I could, though I don't think I thought much beyond the first dreamed-of contract.

I could give up now, couldn't I? Recently, I've considered it. Because, you know what? Writing, writing novels, is damned hard. Sometimes I think it's too hard. "But it's what you do. You can't afford to give up now, can you?"

Can't afford to give up? God, if I only earned from my fiction writing, I couldn't afford to continue! The money for my kind of novel-writing is seriously rubbish. I'd tell you how rubbish, except that I'm ashamed. Yep, I earn a reasonable amount altogether, but that's from speaking, not writing, or it's from writing other things, not fiction.

I moaned about this to my long-suffering agent the other day. "But money isn't the only reward, is it?" she said. "If you imagine yourself not writing, does that conjure up a picture of a creatively satisfying life?"

No, but not being valued for what I write doesn't conjure up that picture either. How much does "creatively satisfying" have to cost in time, effort and money [because I could be earning sensible money doing something else]. And, like it or not, when someone pays you for something, they attach a value to it. I know that by saying that I risk undermining the work that wonderful people do for charity - and I do some myself actually - but this is about my living, my career, my profession. It feels like a pathetic one if I can't earn from it.

So, now, I guess you'd say I am motivated by money. I may not have cared before but now I do. Maybe it's one of the differences between being unpublished and published. We think we write for the glory of writing, the pleasure of being heard, but when we've got that we want something else.

Greedy bastards who spend our lives looking at the grass on the other side, aren't we, we humans?

But you know something? We're back to the excuses for not writing, which was the point of my last post and which I was still struggling with when I started writing this post.

You see, I've worked out what's wrong with me at the moment.

My agent was right, as bloody usual: it's not about the money. The problem is that writing novels is damned difficult, no easier than it was when I started, possibly even harder, and I'm looking for an excuse not to do it. I want, in Emily's words, permission not to write novels. Because there are a load of other things I can write, like this blog, and non-fiction, and articles, and short stories. And I will write them, but if I run away from the difficult one then I'm letting myself down. How "creatively satisfying" would that be?


I do have one more let-out though, one more thing that could legitimately stop me writing the bloody novel. See, yesterday I steeled myself to send my agent the first two chapters of the new WIP. And I'm seriously more than half hoping that she'll say they're rubbish and that I've come up with an unsellable idea. That would be a truly fabulous reason not to write it, wouldn't it? Absolute permission not to write. Then instead of spending all my days struggling to write a novel and earning sod all I could spend all my days blogging for you lot and earning sod all.

Unfortunately, she's already said she loves the title, which was not meant to happen ...

Aghhhh! Nooooo! I'd forgotten the real reason I keep writing. How could I have forgotten? The real reason I write is because every time I get a new contract I get a new pair of boots.

Elizabeth? Are you still there? It's OK, really - you're allowed to say the first two chapters are completely brilliant and compelling and definitely worth continuing. As long as the advance is enough to cover a decent pair of boots, that's fine. I'll write, I'll wear my fingers to the bone, I'll burn the candle at both ends [how does that work?], I'll do anything, anything, anything for boots.

Edited to include:

But, no, I've just remembered something. I've woken up this morning and remembered the real reason why I loved writing fiction in the first place and why I would hate to stop, even though sometimes, like now, it feels horribly difficult: power. The power to move people, the power to create worlds in other people's heads. How can I give that up? Compared to the power of creating worlds, changing minds and stirring hearts, boots, chocolate and sparkly wine are trivial.

Good God, did I just say that???

BREAKING WRITING HABITS

Something for the weekend, as they say. A little thing to get you thinking, inspired by blogger, Twitterer and YA author, Emily Gale - read her post here first.

It got me thinking about something I've recently learnt: the things we believe are habits are just that - habits. And habits can (and very often should) be broken.

We say things about ourselves which sound like truths, but they may not be. Here are some things I've said about myself and which turned out not to be true when tested:

• I can't write fiction when other people are in the house. [Yes, I can if I negotiate untouchable space. I learnt this when my husband was home for six long months of "gardening" leave. We agreed that if I put a scarf on the door handle, he would never come in. That was a great way to get some secret chocolate eating done. But I did write. I had to.]
• I always write on a computer. [Not if I don't have access to one. I learnt this when I travelled to the Isle of Wight to stay in Alfred Noyes' house as the guest of his grandson and at the suggestion of his daughter; my laptop spookily stopped working on the train down there and didn't start working again until I was nearly home. Spooo-ky. Now I quite often write on paper, with a pen. It feels very wonderful. It doesn't look very wonderful but I can learn to deal with that too.]
• I can't write on trains or in hotel rooms. [I tried it and I could. Simple.]
• I couldn't write fantasy. [I just did.]
• I don't like short stories. [Until I read Tania Hershman's The White Road, published by Salt. For some reason, I can't do Amazon links any more but you can find her somehow.]
  

We do two things wrong, I think. [Well, I do many things wrong, but in this context just two.]

1. We make excuses for ourselves for why we don't write more, more often, more easily. "I can't write on trains" is so much more valid than "I find writing really difficult and sometimes even boring and sometimes even quite impossible."
2. We create perfect imagined situations for writing - little routines, mascots, mantras [such as tidy desks, or cups of coffee, special pens, silence, chocolate] and then spend far too long getting everything just right instead of getting on with the task in hand.

Crikey, I've even said that I can't write until I've hoovered behind the fridge. Leaving aside extreme work avoidance such as fridge-hoovering [and I've written about essential Work Avoidance Strategies here - no, silly woman, NOT essential, entirely optional] there are plenty of things we do before we write. I'll check all my email addresses, put the laundry on, tidy my desk, stuff that takes so long that I need another cup of coffee just to recover.

And so I have a challenge for you. Next time you have a time when you're meant to be writing, as in proper writing, the difficult stuff, the real important meaningful stuff, do this:

EITHER [see, I'm so kind that I'm giving you a choice]:

1. Write down all the things you normally do before you'll write; include the conditions you think are ideal, whether it's the silence, the tidiness, the coffee or whatever.
2. Refuse to allow yourself any of them. Create for yourself the opposite, if possible - the noise, the untidiness, the tea instead of coffee [yuck]. And then write - and don't stop until you've written 1000 words. Doesn't matter what the words are like, just write them.
3. Eat chocolate

OR
1. Go and write somewhere you've never written before. Anywhere: a café, another room, the park, a station, the kitchen, lying on your stomach on the floor, in the bath. Write 1000 words.
2. Eat chocolate.

That [chocolate-eating] is the only habit you should never break. After all, you couldn't write without chocolate, could you?

This is a picture of me actually in Alfred N's house, reading The Highwayman. What you can't see is that in the background I am also listening to his voice read the poem on an ancient cassette lent to me by his grandson.

PS - if you're interested in my personally epiphanal experience of that trip, here you are. Something else for the weekend.

DO YOU NEED TO GET OUT MORE?

I know I do. I know this somewhere deep inside, but I forget it when I'm overwhelmed by deadlines. Because things like going for walks seem like luxuries when you're really busy. Which I am: coming up to Edinburgh Book Festival madness, with six* talks to prepare from scratch, two events to chair, an AGM to plan and chair; and I'm organising a hot-ticket party for 200 in one of the festival marquees - and yesterday I was called for jury service. For August. Oh. My. God. A breakdown looms. Or jail, if they don't let me off.

(* thought it was five but realised I'd not put one in my diary)

But all that pales into insignificance when you're trying to get a novel started. As I am. Desperately, because it would have been so great to have the first chapter written before August came and then it could mull away in my brain and I'd be ready to leap back in in September. But it's not working. The voice isn't coming. Why? Because I'm simply not ready. I haven't had enough time (or the right sort of time) to let the characters, particularly the main one whose voice it will mostly be, grow inside me and begin to talk.

Thing is - and here's my learning point for this post - you should never write until your characters are clamouring to get out of your head, till they're pestering you day and night, rattling their cage, till they start to force your hands to move over the keyboards, till, in short, they absolutely demand that their voices are heard.

In fact, Howard Nemerov said that writing was like the relationship with your bowels (stay with me): "First you can, then you can't, finally you must: only then should you reach for the paper ..."

I've talked about voice before - see here. Voice is not something you can order about. Voice has to come somewhat mysteriously, at least partially of its own accord. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. But you have to get it right and you have to nurture it very, very subtly, in a hands-off kind of way - though with utter ruthless control, too. If you don't get it right, your fabulous plot is stuffed. To be honest, in my case I don't have a fabulous plot either, but that's because for me voice comes first, plot follows; because the plot depends on the characters' actions and the characters' actions depend on their voice and the book's voice. I know, you'd think it was the other way round - but think about it, play with it, and see what happens to your relationship with your book when you do. Does it become more real?

So, what's this got to do with getting out more? In the words of my favourite film**, a lot.

I've noticed for a long time that different environments make me more or less creative. You've probably noticed the same. It's not surprising or rocket science. But there is some science behind it. This article in Sciam Mind is pretty eye-opening: it suggests that we are more creative in rooms with higher ceilings, for example. The article mentions research in which two groups of people were given a task. One group was in a room with an 8-foot ceiling and the other was in a room with a 10-foot ceiling. The second group came up with more abstract, imaginative and creative ideas.

In terms of ceilings, what greater ceiling can you have than the sky? I know that when my writing is stuck the only answer is to go for a walk, not to stay at my desk. "Environmental psychology" now explains it. And there's even a word for the tendency of people to work better when they can at least see a natural scene instead of a brick wall - biophilia. Love it! I am a biophiliac, not a drifter who keeps going outside instead of "working".

So, since I'm throughly blocked, writing-wise, I'm going to take Nemerov's advice and not reach for the paper yet. I'm going to get out, outside, out of my study, out of myself, into the biggest ceiling I know. I know from experience, and therefore have to trust, that this will work - ideas will come when I give them space. I'm going to stop trying to force this character to speak before she's ready; she must grow slowly, and one day, soon probably, she'll hit me between the eyes with her power and reality; she'll start yelling to be heard.

I just hope I'm not in the middle of doing an event when she does it. Pretty high ceilings those book festival tents have ...

Meanwhile, here's a picture of my husband (the one on the left) "standing and staring" beside a statue. The plaque in front of them is the first verse of that fab poem by William Henry Davies, titled Leisure. Obviously, I can't print it all here, or I'd be breaking the laws of copyright (by one year ...) but I think that "fair use" allows me to quote the first two lines:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

Of course, if I were to be imprisoned for not doing jury service, I may have quite a lot of time to stand and stare. Mind you, I could get a great novel written.

** Pay attention at the back: Life of Brian. Could it be any other?

And while you're still with me, and talking about getting out more, I thought I'd show you this photo of the results of my minor gardening escapade during which I created an "alittlement" some weeks ago. These are the beans growing in two pots. Jack, where are you?

And finally, after writing this blog post, I decided I would practise what I was preaching and get out. So I did, and all the way up to my favourite hill in Edinburgh I walked. Considering I live in the middle of a city and it only took me twenty minutes to walk here, I think it's pretty inspirational for a writer to have that on her doorstep. No excuses for crappy writing, I'd say. The shot at the end is Edinburgh Castle - which you need me to tell you, as you'd never guess. I suggest you play it with your sound off - it's damned windy today (which is why I am wobbling a lot).

NANOWRIMO - WHY? BECAUSE ...

I do have a habit of doing mad things. Frequently I regret it. Usually in the middle of the night. I once took a test to see whether I was a risk-taker. I scored pathetically on the type of risk which involves physical danger - like sitting by a window when at any moment a pigeon might come crashing through - but impressively bravely on "new experience-seeking".

If there was a category for "things no sane person would do but which aren't actually even a teensy bit dangerous" that would be my type of risk.

So, doing a NaNoWriMo is pretty much in that category. (A Nanothingy, btw, is where a group of idiot writers decide to write 50,000 words in a month. You're meant to do it while having a normal working life, though you will not be normal by the end of it.)

I am fascinated by several aspects but I'll share just three with you. And I'm going to be briefish because a) my posts are often too long (though none of you has been cruel enough to tell me so) and b) I've, er, got 5,000 words to write tonight.

1. Changing your writing habits is a good thing
We get into ruts. People ask writers things like "Where do you write?" or "When do you write?" and we have answers. We shouldn't have answers. Whatever your answer is now, why not change it? Our brains are wired to love change. They get excited by it, pumping out dopamine, the chemical that makes us learn, and live, and love to live and learn. This week, I've changed. I was a keyboard-addicted-email-addicted-writing-is-a-last resort-can't-write-unless-I've-vacuumed-the-dog kind of a writer, but I'm now a writer who can write With A Pen On Paper, in the garden, in a coffee shop, on a bus with yackety people around me; I'm a writer who writes first and does tasks later. This is a revelation.

2. "No Plot? No Problem!" - the book by the founder of Nanowrimo, Chris Baty - is a must-read for authors. I rarely say that anything is a must-read, but this is. If you don't find something in it that excites or challenges or improves you, I'll eat my novel. I've never read a book about how to write a novel and never wanted to, but this is a totally different book about how to write a novel - it shows you how to write your novel, not how novels are written or what to put in them. Everything from time management made sexy (que?) to how to bribe, terrify or blackmail yourself or your friends into writing is covered.

3. The important thing is to turn off your internal editor. As Baty says, "The first law of exuberant imperfection is essentially this: the quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy." You're just supposed to write, get that first draft down, and allow it to be substandard. For me, it's hard not to re-write every sentence five times before going on to the next one. But it feels so much better to get some kind of flow and I used to be able to - I'm just getting it back, that freedom to write rubbish and deal with it later.

The way Nanowrimo works is that you all encourage each other. Or threaten, bribe, goad, jeer at or otherwise abuse each other. On Saturday, one of the participants and I were being silly on Facebook - "bet you can't" / "oh yes, I can" / "I'll raise you 5,000" / "losER" and in the end we challenged each other to write 10,000 words on Sunday. I woke up on Sunday with a migraine and she had a serious hangover (shame on you, Gillian ...) but we were both at our desks. (Yes, OK, I see this isn't sounding attractive.) And we wrote, oh boy did we write. Neither of us reached 10,000 - well, I could have, of course, but I felt sorry for her with her hangover, so I generously eased up and took another couple of codeine. But none of our several thousand words would have been written if we hadn't been doing this. Which feels pretty good.

Writing a novel is hard. Writing it with other people pushing and encouraging you is a whole lot easier. I recommend it. You don't have to wait for the official Nanowrimo to start - get a group of friends together online and just do it. Go to the website here for everything you need to start one. Or do a smaller challenge - anything to break whatever habits might be holding you back. (And you'll never know till you try.)

And even if you don't do anything vaguely Nanoesque, do remember:

• you can (and often should) change your habits or at least challenge them
• it really is worth reading this book:

Mind you, I have only done a week. In another three, I could be a wreck. I could really regret this whole post and be cursing the day Chris Baty ever decided not to be a normal person doing a normal job.

But at least I took the risk.

WRITER'S BLOCK AND AN APOLOGY

Apologies to those of you who lovely people who commented or contacted me personally to say they really liked my idea of doing online one-to-one tuition: I'm afraid it's not going to happen, or at least not in the foreseeable future. I was going to do it, really: I spent the weekend planning it, creating a new blog to give you all the info, working everything out in huge detail. The blog was all ready to go live. Just needed to click a button, though first I was going to ask lovely Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works to say what she thought. While I was doing it, I admit that a major part of me was screaming NO! You see, although I love teaching and would have enjoyed so many aspects of this idea, I have a habit of doing too much, spending too long at my computer and not enough time getting a life, and I know that I am supposed to be writing books, doing talks, and all the other paraphernalia of being an author (including this blog, which I really enjoy doing), all of which would be enough even if I didn't have a husband, dog and occasionally two daughters. Not to mention the chocolate habit.

But I wanted to do it, and I'm an idiot, so I was ploughing on. Then, yesterday evening, my husband and I were going to the cinema, just about to leave the house, when the phone rang. It was a friend to say that a good friend of ours had died. Just like that. Out of the so-called blue.

I don't believe in signs, but I do believe in listening to yourself. And my first rational and coherent thought was a cliché: life's too short. Then another one: you only get one life. And finally a line from my favourite film, The Life of Brian: "Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it."

But life isn't a piece of shit - life's good, mostly. Life is for living and loving and so I'm going to live it and love it, and that means making time for myself, family and friends, chocolate, novels, the best words I can produce in the best order I can design. And that means no new and possibly exhausting projects like an on-line writing school, at least for now. Even though I'd have got a lot of satisfaction from it, it's not what I know I should be doing and I know this is the right decision. I hope you understand.

What I will do is include some posts about the various things I'd have taught you if you had signed up for my mad idea. This blog started as purely advice about getting published, but since the most important step towards getting published is writing the best possible book, I should and will include some advice about that, and I'll focus especially on the most common things people do wrong in their writing.

Meanwhile, I am myself learning the brutal reality of writer's block. It does feel as though something physical is sticking there, that if I tried to get back to the novel in progress today it just wouldn't work. Creativity needs space and there's no space in there right now. If I sit at my desk and stare at the screen, nothing will come and the more nothing comes the worse it feels. So, I'm going to switch the computer off and I'm going for a long walk with the dog. She won't be pleased, as it's raining and she's not stupid, but we're going. Walking and fresh air - even wet fresh air - always work for me.

Normal service and "crabbit old bat" sense of humour will be resumed. Just don't go away and please do take care.