It’s #NationalWritingDay! So here’s what I’ve learned

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As I wait for my third novel to be published in October, and given the day that’s in it, I thought I’d try to bring together some of the things I’ve learned during my years of making stuff up.

I’ve written three books, all very different. Fractured is set mainly in Somalia and tells of a kidnapped journalist who befriends a young Somali working with his captors; Rain Falls on Everyone tells the story of Theo, who came to Ireland after the Rwandan genocide, struggles to find his place and drifts into drug-dealing with catastrophic consequences; and The Reckoning is a mother’s letter to the daughter she abandoned, set during the First and Second World Wars.

If there is a common thread uniting these books it is, I suppose, my curiosity, my desire to see the world through other eyes and then to re-create that experience for others. It’s not a moral exercise. It’s more a necessity. I read because I don’t want to live a blinkered, one-dimensional life. That’s also why I write.

So here, in bullet points because apparently they are all the rage these days, are a few things that I’ve picked up along the way. They won’t work for everyone but this is how I do it and who knows, maybe something in here will help someone. And wouldn’t that be a great thing.

Be like Nike. Just do it. You may be waiting for the perfect moment but know that it  does not exist. There will always be ironing and cleaning to do, kids to cherish and nurture, dinners to cook, dogs to walk and Netflix series to binge on, but they’ll all still be there when you’ve done your words. It’s now or never.
Don’t edit as you write. I learned this the hard way. I am a perfectionist and this really held me up when I was writing my first two novels. I would anguish over the first paragraphs, the first page, going over and over them again until they were perfect. Which is all well and good except I wasn’t moving forward and in those early days, you need momentum. It’s like getting over a wall. Just get over the wall. Don’t worry about how you look from the ground. You can go back and work on your parkour skills later.
Never underestimate the importance of a cushion. Writing a book is a killer for your backside. Treat it well. Without it you are nothing. If things get too bad, find a bed, lie on it and type there. A change is as good as a rest.
Don’t be afraid to use the thesaurus. I use it as I imagine Coleridge used opium — as an inspiration, a way to open my mind and get the juices flowing. I rarely use the alternative words I find there, but I always think of something else that fits even better.
Some days, your sentences will read like the operating instructions for a washing machine. Don’t give up. Keep putting those words down. You can make them fly later but only if you have already tied them to the ground.
That said when you really hit a wall, when you hate your idea, your words and your life, step away from the computer. I go running. I listen to podcasts about books, interviews with authors, success stories basically, and that clears my mind and gives me hope. It also gets rid of all that useless aggression because I can’t run for toffee. My daughters call my jogging ‘staggering’.  If I am really down though, I feel no shame in going upstairs to bed, pulling the covers over my head and trying to dream my way out of the problem. Twenty minutes is good and no more than 30. Then downstairs, cup of coffee and back to work.
 It’s been said before but it’s worth repeating: the first draft will be monstrous. You will want to pluck out your eyes when you read back over it. Don’t panic. This first draft bears as much relation to your finished novel as five-year-old Michelangelo’s stick-men drawings do to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Chill. You’ve got this. It can’t get any worse, right?
Somewhere around the middle of the novel, you will lose your way, your hope and the will to live. At this point, you can try writing late at night, with a bottle of wine within easy reach. You just have to get over this slump. You have to write through it and just as wine/beer/vodka/your personal Chumbawamba list help you loosen up in public, they may also free your writing mind. It’s worth a try.
Talk about your work. Make it live in the outside world because sometimes you need to remember why you decided to do this in the first place and one way to do that is to talk about it to someone else. Let your passion shine through. Forget about the small detail of getting thousands of words into sentences and go big on the overarching themes, your VISION. It’s a kind of unreality check and it might just kickstart your enthusiasm in times of crisis. Feel free to add wine too.
If you have children, tell them what you are doing. Talk about the story. They will ask awkward and annoying questions, reveal plot holes and correct inaccurate assumptions. You may end up stomping out of the room but later, when they are in bed, you will fix your manuscript and remember why you love them.
Mix it up. For my first two books, I wrote as the book should be read. But in my last one, I got stuck and frustrated but instead of banging my head on the table, or avoiding the problem by cleaning the shower (my LEAST favourite task because really, why?), I decided to try to write a few paragraphs for the ending. I more or less knew what my last lines would be and it just seemed more productive to do that than the above. It worked. Of course, I later rewrote most of the ending but it got me going again and that’s the best you can hope for sometimes.
Set your characters free. If they go off on a tangent, follow them. If they box themselves (and you) into a corner, take a deep breath, sit back and ask yourself, why did they do that? Chances are they’ve done the right thing and now you just have to figure out the motivation. Once you work that out, my bet is that corner will turn out to have a door or a window or maybe both, and you’ll be off and running again in no time.
When the writing is flowing, don’t sweat the small stuff. Feel like you’ve written that very same phrase to describe a room three chapters earlier? Don’t worry. You can fix it later. Just keep swimming, as Dory would say.
The FIND button on Microsoft Word is the best invention since screw-top wine bottles. Use it. I can generally sense when I have used a phrase before. With FIND I can check, and boy do I check!
Enjoy the ride and when you finish, realise the true scale of your achievement. You are a superhuman creator of worlds. What once did not exist, now does. Feel free to don your superhero cape, dig out that tiara, pour yourself some wine and bask in your success. This is no time to do the ironing. You are a god.