There are three important things to bear in mind when writing.
One, you must start. Lots of people have a book, or an idea for a book, fermenting in them, but it won’t become anything until you sit down and start.
Two, you must finish. Lots of people have incomplete manuscripts which, for a variety of reasons, they feel unable to finish.
Three, you must use rejection as a tool to improve. It is badly named, to be honest. It isn’t rejection, it’s simply non-acceptance. It’is, I think, one of the reasons people don’t start and don’t complete their work. If you don’t finish it, you can’t be rejected.
This applies to all sorts of tsks and written work, not just books, but it’s simpler just to write “book”.
Why, you ask, am I telling you this. well, it’s not so much that I’m telling you, it’s more that I’m reminding myself. I’ve become quite haphazard lately and I need to get back to work.
I am the owner of an unfocussed brain and I need to keep myself in check. Recently it has been getting worse instead of better. Part of this is due to me starting to read books again instead of skimming the internet. That takes hours out of my day. It also means I haven’t been reading other blogs. This is not good.
However, to focus, I have to stop looking at other things. I have to cut out reading random stuff from the internet and I really ought to stop watching birds in the garden. There are a lot of tits about. I think we may have a Great Tit nest somewhere in the neighbourhood as they were out yesterday gathering caterpillars. We’ve also had Long-Tailed tits out plus the usual pigeons, magpies and blackbirds. We even had a buzzard fly over earlier this morning, which is a first. They have been as close as half a mile away (over the school playing fields) but they have never flown over before.
I also have four poems to write. They are in my head, I just need to get them onto paper.
As I have today off (an unexpected bonus) I have decided to work at then computer instead of watching TV. Let’s see how it works out.
Photos are of the right birds, but not today, as you can see from the lack of leaves.
Great Tit at Wilford
All I can see are two bird with their backs to each other and one is saying, “I will write the great avian novel” and the other is saying, “who was that bird I saw you with?”
Ha! 🙂 🙂 🙂
“This applies to all sorts of tasks and written work, not just books” You are quite right. I have noticed that myself. 🙂
Good luck with the poems, Simon. I know they will be good ones.
Thank you. I am struggling again – this seems to be the norm these days. I assume it’s just part of a normal cycle and things will come round again. 🙂
You are right about reading books. Now that I have got old, I don’t have time for them any more as everything else takes twice as long as it used to do.
It does. Everything from cookery to lacing up my shoes!
Now that I’m old I go back and read Kerouac and pretend to be young again.
I regress even further and re-read the Narnia books. I never realised, when I was ten, I would still be prodding the backs of wardrobes when I was an old man. 🙂
We all have to decide how to use our time, a precious resource. But surely there is a little time in your day to watch birds. After all…
There’s always time to watch birds. Unfortunately, there’s always time to procrastinate, surf the net and fitter my time away. There’s just to time to write at the moment. 🙁
Now you’ve told us your plan you have to carry it out. We will be watching you
I know. Me and my big mouth . . .
🙂