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When it comes to the internal stuff I never have been a consistent writer. By that I mean that I can’t sit down at 8 a.m., write until 1 p.m., have lunch and then write until 5 p.m. and stop. Some can. Some can’t. Neither way is better or worse than the other. My way is to wake up at, for instance, 3 a.m., knowing what the next paragraph is, and I must write it now rather than dictate into a machine or scribble some notes and fall asleep again. It means actually getting up. Sitting at my desk before that next paragraph dissolves, and writing it down in full.
Like many creative writers I used to beat myself up about a perceived writer’s block, staring at a white page or a blank computer screen convincing myself that I’d lost it, that I couldn’t write any more, that my internal editor (that bitchy old hag) was right and that I wasn’t a writer after all.
Nowadays I welcome the times when the heat dies down. They’re a chance for me to switch; to do something else equally creative, to let the stories ‘sit’ for a while and start spreading their roots a little. It’s my thinking time. So I’ll find some interesting commercial writing to do. Pick up my camera again and tell stories with that instead. Get armfuls of books from the library and read all day and all night. And enjoy the change of perspective.
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