The Year of Writing Dangerously

Note to self: Don’t put eggs in pocket before bending down to inspect hen’s legs. Just thought I’d add that cautionary note to any friends who are thinking of doing this sort of thing. Bit of a gooey start to the morning. I’ve been a little away with the fairies the last few days. I’ve been spending most of my time trying to find things that I don’t want to lose, and transferring them to my laptop. I have a feeling that my desk dinosaur is dying. It keeps rebooting itself for no apparent reason. Anyway.

I keep on finding plots, outlines, and stories that I started writing, and then forgot about in the mad rush of this last year. This has caused me no end of trouble because now I want to dive in and write more of all of them. I’m also thinking that I’ve just pinpointed a huge problem with myself in general. My inspiration often gets out of hand. I have hundreds of ideas drop into my head all at once, and then I zoom around doing bits of lots of different things instead of concentrating on one. This is not a good thing, and having figured it out about myself now, I’m going to try really hard to change the way I do things. So, all of that is now nicely filed away for me to dig into in the future. I found out something else also.

I have no idea where inspiration comes from. I for one get some pretty weird ideas. When I first started writing, the idea of any other flesh and blood person actually reading my scribbles never occurred to me, so I just wrote what came out. Now I try and see what I write as a reader would, and I think that lately this has nobbled me. Reading my old stories has made me wonder if people really do like to read what just comes sometimes. I do, so why wouldn’t anyone else? I liked them a little more than some of the things I’ve written lately, and so have the people who’ve read them. My new rule will be to go back to where I started, and write according to my muse’s instructions, and not tweak too much, worrying about whether readers will “get me”. I think that some might, and that’s the whole point of my trip anyway.

I never held back at all writing African Me. I’ve got so many hot potatoes in there that all that would be needed for a party is quite a lot of people and piles of butter and some champers. Over the course of the last few months I’ve removed a couple of scenes, thinking them too forthright or graphic. After my epiphany today though, I’ll be taking my chances and putting them back in again. I’ve learned that restricting your muse can lead to stilted, half-baked scribbles. At least in my case I think this is true, and half-baked stories are not what I want to put out there. And now. Back to writing dangerously!

Till next time friends. xxx