Status Update - March 2020

March 2020 still has the ring of the far future in my ears: can this really be 2020? Aren't we supposed to be driving flying cars and living in space by now? Which goes to show: at any one time, more than 90% of the present looks pretty much like maybe 80% of the previous decade, and 50% of the half century before it. I'm guessing here, and there's no doubt things are changing, but perhaps the only safe prediction to make about the near future is that it won't be as different as we think.

One thing that has improved for me over the last year is my health. This time last year I was still in the thick of post-concussion syndrome, and writing this would have been unthinkable, especially after the couple of hours of text and screen that I've had already today. I'm still not 100% better, still have the odd bad day, and the odd twinge inbetween times, but in the past week I've managed to write around 6000 words, so that's not bad (I'm also on leave from the day job, which makes a big difference). It feels like progress.

Those 6000 words were a couple of chapters in Fire and Flood, the third and final book in the Tethys Trilogy that started with the (now rebranded) Ultramarine. I still can't say for certain when I'll be done with it - the ups and downs of my continuing recovery make what would normally be at best a very vague guess even less reliable - but it is getting there. Not all the kinks in the plot are ironed out, not every loose end ties up, but that's writing for you.

Alongside that I've been developing some new ideas. Undoubtedly, a few of those will make it and others won't: I've learnt now that what seems at first like a great new project doesn't always take off. Like any endeavour, there's a certain amount of 'wastage', but I try to be positive about that - exploring ideas is never a bad thing, and even if some ideas don't make it on their own, they might find their way into something else as a subplot or bit of the backstory.

One effect on my output alongside the lingering dregs of concussion is my reading habit. I love reading - mostly since the concussion in 2018 that's actually meant listening to audiobooks - but it has a marked effect on my own ability to write. It seems like most writers' advice to those wanting to write books is to read first: to the extent that my own opinion counts alongside real writers, I would say the most important thing is to write. In my own case, I've seen more films (movies) than I've read books, and moving pictures have undoubtedly furnished a lot of my inspiration and subconscious leanings. Reading helps, no doubt, but it can be difficult to find your own way when you're still dazzled by someone else's work. And reading after writing has given me insights which I'm pretty sure I would have lacked otherwise: insights into pacing and technique. Now when I read something. I often catch myself spotting what I feel is a more conscious intervention by the writer to solve a problem that's arisen from the more creative aspects of the story. Maybe I'm just a bit dense, but that's how it's worked for me.

In any case, that book won't write itself, and no amount of reading will help get words down. Nor, for that matter, will blog writing; on that note, I will head back to the wilds of Tethys.