My writing week #10

Roadblocks. Speed bumps. Common things in every writers’ journey. I hit a couple of those yesterday. I woke up early, made a cup of tea and sat down to write. Hang on, I thought. There’s something very important I need to do … see if my cat is scared of cucumbers (if you have no idea why I would do this, click here). I gave her a little extra breakfast, placed a cucumber behind her and grabbed the camera (see here for result). Then I watched the first video again to see if I’d done it wrong, shared my video on Facebook and giggled at my own funniness.

After a bit more dithering, I opened Scrivener, changed a few words and stared at the screen. Fifteen minutes later I had accomplished little more apart from wondering, ‘Am I on the right track?’, ‘Am I kidding myself?’, ‘Should I start again?’ and ‘There must be a better word for that’. None of these questions were particularly inspiring.

To be fair, last week I tipped the 20,000-word mark on my manuscript. The time was there and so were the words. This week, I have a book launch for Rocky Romance, a photo shoot for Rocky Romance with one of the local papers, work, a son who is moving across country for a couple of months (he leaves tonight), apricot jam to make (all my apricots are ripening at once), and more. I have a lot on my mind, so I wasn’t expecting much when I sat down with my cup of tea this morning. But guess what? The words came again. And when I left the computer to get ready for the school run, words and scenes kept running through my head. Sometimes, the best thing to do when you hit a writer’s roadblock is take a break. In my case, it was with a cat and a cucumber (which may not work for anyone else).

In other writing news, my short story “Valiant Return” was highly commended in the City of Rockingham Short Fiction Awards and I’m now considering avenues to get it published. And I spent a lovely day with fellow writer Lily Malone at her place near Margaret River. Our husbands were betting we’d be talking about writing within minutes, but we proved them wrong; the ‘w’ word only emerged briefly when we were sharing a meal around the fire.

Enjoy the photos.