So, Christmas is over and I’ve been congratulating myself on how well I’ve coped with a period of seasonal abstention from writing. I’ve been telling myself that I’m not in the least neurotic about my lack of creative production, because I have decided on a list of New Year’s Resolutions to propel me into a fruitful writing period. Here they are:
1) I will rise at 5am and write for two hours, three times a week. Yes, it does sound monkish and punishing – but it works. It’s my best time of day; the silent hours before the house awakes, when my mind is at it’s most creative, somewhere between darkness and light. I’m not sure how evangelical I’ll feel about it tomorrow morning, in the gloom of dawn, huddled around my mug of tea . . .
2) I will walk the dog every day, come rain or shine. I love my solitary country walks with Charlie, to clear the mind and shake out the writer’s stoop. And apart from that, it’s very rewarding to see a dog smile.
3) I will overcome my stationery shopping addiction. I will use up my weighty stash of Paperchase notebooks and Bic Crystal Grip pens, and avoid the crisp new papery temptation of stationery shops altogether. Well, at least throughout January.
4) I will stop buying new novels . . . until I have read the countless titles I have hoarded over the past two decades. I covet books, willfully purchasing them in the full knowledge that they will only join the back of the already enormous yet-to-be-read list. In 2010 I WILL read them all!
5) I will cook more. There’s nothing quite like the instant gratification which comes from producing a batch of perfectly formed fairy cakes. It causes my children shower love on me, my friends to coo over my baking skills, and it rewards me with a fleeting domestic glow. So very unlike writing a book. I love the secrecy of writing, I even embrace the isolation of it – but it’s a long wait before you get to see the finished item, and even longer before you start to hear something nice about it. And even then, I think my children are more impressed by the fairy cakes than the novels.
6) I will allow myself to daydream more. Life’s busy; there’s the day job, the school life, the washing, the filing, the social life, the housework, the novel writing . . . But daydreaming is the meditative time when stories become clear, when conversations are imagined, when nuances show themselves. I’m going to lie on my bed and stare into the middle distance more in 2010.
So, now that I’ve completed the initial PR circuit for Glasshopper, handed in my MA dissertation and decluttered my basement office . . . it’s back to the writing, and I couldn’t be happier.
Happy New Year to writers everywhere!
