Boring boring boring

Saturdays in my house are really boring.

I’d really like to stamp my feet, and stomp up and down the corridor in a flumpy-footed manner… Sometimes I’d just like to behave badly and shout, and stamp a bit more. But I don’t because I understand; I do so hate seeing both sides of any story.

When you’ve been out all week in the office – or worse still – travelling to offices in other countries, or going off to school, you want some down time, yeah? You want some slouching about in your fisherman’s pants? In Husband’s case he wants to play ‘world domination’ games on his computer; Son wants to do any kind of slouching that isn’t homework and Daughter today wants to be moving everything to her new bedroom, so not exactly slouching, but definitely nesting.

But me, well apart from Thursday when I got to adorn myself in my gladrags and socialise, I’ve been home writing and stuff all week. So now I want to go out with my family … but they don’t.

*Sigh*

I’ve written 300 words today. It’s taken me all day – why am I so slow?

Serendipity

I’ve just finished reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy.

OH.MY.GOD. The book is amazing. It’s brilliant and terrifying. Actually it’s turned into one of those ‘why am I trying to do this when there are writers out there doing THIS?’

It’s not remotely a book I would’ve picked up myself, but Julia Bell recommended it to me when I was in the UK. (I think we were talking about ‘truth’ in writing and this was an example.) She’d done a lecture on it recently and she said she’d thought about putting some notes up on her website about it.

So I went to have a look at her website (here) to see if I could find some more about the book. I couldn’t find any notes but I found this from her article ‘Dressing to Thrill’:

‘Sometimes I fear that some writers want to get published more than they want to write. Being a successful writer is a long apprenticeship. Writing a novel is a slow, frustrating process. It takes time and patience to get it right.’

And then I saw Jon’s post from yesterday, which is relevant too.

I remembered that for me it's never been about the publishing, but about the writing - the process - the thinking. That's why I started. Yes, my standards are high and so be it.

I'm still here

So it’s painfully slow, and I’ve calculated that if I write only 200 words a day, five days a week, it’ll take two years to write my book.

Still, I’m writing.

I can’t quite persuade myself that I can write tosh and come back and sort it out later. Maybe that’s not my way.

Maybe, I have to write slowly and right (mostly).

Still, it’s a lot of sitting and thinking. And looking at the ‘recount’ button, and pressing it and finding out I’ve only added five words since I last pressed it.