Tuesday, August 31, 2004A brief crisis of confidenceIt being bank holiday here in the UK, I've not worked Saturday to Monday. Yet in amongst doing DIY and indulging in excellent activities like going to the Globe Theatre and to Marble Hill for an open air concert (music average, picnic great), I suffered an Ascendants crisis. I woke up in the proverbial cold sweat with my head doing 140 in the outside lane. The trouble being that all the work I'd done to date added up to nothing. There's that moment when a pit opens up and panic nibbles at your ankles. Of course, the waking despair, if I can call it that, isn't as awful as all that. When the mind clicks into gear and starts to analyse, it all revolves around timing aspects... There's a battle that I've set far too late and need to move... there's a central character who is in the wrong place... there's a betrayal that can't wait. It needs fixing or hte book will fail for pace and I can't have that. Relief is a lovely emotion and once I'd worked through the problem, I enjoyed it very much. But it goes to show that even when you think you're in control, your mind is still churning away in the background, looking for flaws in your work. It's a double-edged sword. It can't be turned off and thank heaven for that or I'd run out of ideas. But it also means some very uncomfortable moments when you feel very alone and very low... Thursday, August 26, 2004New web design, new commitment...With the launch of the new site look and feel, I'm keen to make sure I post on the journal far more often. Hold me to it by sending irritating emails if I don't but I think I should be posting a couple of times a week at least. Everything seems to be happening at the moment, by the way. I'm well behind on the new book but I have to say that I'm always this way around about now. Submission deadline isn't until end of November but I need to be aware of what I still have to do now as time has a habit of passing horribly quickly. I can put the backlog down to many things... mainly it's about writing something totally new and different. New characters, names, countries, systems, plots... everything. The Raven are being rested but I had no idea how hard it would be to get lost in the new world. I should have seen it of course. After all, I've written nothing but The Raven for the past six years so it stands to reason it'll be tough to change tack. I gave up work too, as you know. And more time, I've found, means more distractions as well as the potential to be able to write far more, research far more and revise far more. I am doing all those latter three but that doesn't stop the mind wondering and the discipline failing from time to time. And I fell in love. Soppy but great yet it takes a grat deal of the time I'd have spent writing. I'll take being happier any day but again, it was a change of life and routine I hadn't counted upon and didn't realise would bring with it the challenges it has. There's more but I shan't bore people with it... suffice to say that life has turned absolutely upside down in the past twelve months. Still, despite the stress I'm beginning to feel grow day by day, I rather like being this new way up... |
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