Exercising The Writing Muscle

24 April 2014

In the space of the last two months I’ve been out of the country on no less than three separate occasions. I’ve been to some wonderful places, I’ve seen some wonderful things and I’ve had some wonderful experiences.

At the end of February I went to Iceland in search of the Northern Lights. I was lucky enough to find them and much more besides. If you’d like to know more about it you can read the blog I wrote whilst I was there. In March I went to Morocco for my annual bird-watching expedition. We climbed the Atlas Mountains to look for Tristam’s Warbler and walked across the desert to see Thick-billed Lark, Trumpeter Finch and the oh so aptly named Cream-coloured Courser (what a beautiful bird that is – it took my breath away). Last Sunday I returned from a week in Mexico where I saw my son get married on the beach. I swam with dolphins, paid homage to Hemingway with a deep-sea fishing trip, spent an evening at the Coco Bongo nightclub in Cancun (some night that was!) and visited the Mayan temple at Tulum. I also did the 5k run in Paradise - and I’ve got the T-shirt to prove it.

Fabulous, fabulous things. But they were all crowded in and although I don’t regret a single minute of it all and there are moments that will stay with me for the rest of my life, I have to confess to feeling slightly overwhelmed. I’ve hardly had time to reflect on them, let alone settle back down to any kind of normal life. And in terms of my writing, the effect has been utterly ruinous.

About a week ago, as I was lounging by the pool (I may even have been in it), Pina Colada in hand, I remember thinking that once upon a time I used to be an author. It was as if that were all part of another life and my attempts at becoming a writer had come to nought. And I have to say that at that moment it didn’t seem to matter. The sun was shining, I was enjoying myself in the company of friends and family and I dismissed any worries the thought might have given rise to by telling myself I’d sort it all out later. Maňana, in fact, as they say in that part of the world. And anyway, surely it must do me some good to take a break from things from time to time. Ha!

Now I pride myself on being relatively strong-willed. I like to think that if I put my mind to something I can achieve great things. My approach to writing is disciplined (my Dear Lady Wife will vouch for that) and I tell myself that if I really want to I can write under the most extreme of circumstances. But I defy even the most single-minded author to have continued writing throughout the two months I’ve just experienced. I managed it for one trip away (I kept a log while I was in Iceland) but after that I was forced to give up and the rewrite of my second novel that I’d been working on before I left has had to be abandoned. My writing has come to a grinding halt and now I must try and pick it up again.

How? Clearly I need to get back into my old routine. That should be easy, I hear you say, you’ve blogged about it often enough. And so I have, but I have to confess that I’m finding it difficult. There are plenty of excuses. It helps to have clothes to wear and there’s all the washing and ironing to do. Plus the fact that the garden hasn’t been touched yet this year and I would really like to get back out into the summerhouse. I tell myself I don’t suffer from jet-lag. I make sure I adjust my watch to UK time as soon as I get on the plane and I can usually sleep on overnight journeys. On Monday morning I was up at six as usual but by Thursday things had caught up with me and it was 8am before I surfaced. And all those disco tunes from Coco Bongo are still going round in my head ...

However, help is at hand. Back in March, sandwiched somewhere between Iceland and Morocco, I went to the pre-launch reading of a new book. A close friend of mine has an autistic child and she and a group of similarly challenged parents had banded together to record their experiences. They had employed a writing mentor to guide them in their efforts and in her introduction to the reading she spoke about Exercising The Writing Muscle. I fully understood what she meant. As a life-long jogger I know how easy it is to become unfit if I don’t go out for a run on a regular basis. It’s the same with the writing – left unused for too long, the writing muscle grows weak and it needs to be exercised constantly if it’s to be of any use.

So I need to get back into ‘training’. And to do so I’ve set myself some writing exercises on a daily basis to build up the mental strength I need to finish off my novel. Starting on Thursday, to begin with I’m writing this article. On Friday, I’ll be putting together my next book review for Book Talk. On Saturday I intend to write another book review and on Sunday I’m going to make a start on the novel by reading through the final section and making some notes before beginning work on it on Monday. It’s no good me plunging straight into it because I know that simply won’t work. Just as trying to run 5k after a few weeks’ lay off from jogging is going to end in disaster. I need to Exercise My Writing Muscle first.

I’ve had a great two months but now it’s time to get back to work. I’ve got a plan of how to do it and I need to stick to it. And d’you know what? That’s 1000 words this morning and I’m beginning to feel better already.