Sometimes, writing is hard.

Sometimes, writing is hard.

I’m sure some of you are thinking, “Tell me something I don’t already know.”

But for me, this is not the norm. For those of you who read my previous blog about "How long does it take to write a novel?", you’ll see that the first drafts of my novels tend to come quite quickly. Then comes the many, many more hours involved in rewriting and editing. That’s the painful and time consuming part.

I’m currently trying to write my fourth novel and it has been quite a struggle so far. I’ve been trying to figure out why this one is proving to be such a challenge and I’ve come up with several theories. (Excuses?)

First, my latest novel "The Second Shooter" was just released on February 24th. Surely, there should be some downtime to be expected after that. I’ve been spending more time promoting it than I did on my previous novels. I did a presentation to the "London Writers Society" which resulted in a few sales and some positive feedback. I also did a presentation to the “Kiwanis Writers Group” on what’s involved in publishing a book. That was a lot of fun and was my most successful sales event so far (some people bought all three of my books). But those events were several weeks ago now. Time to get back to work.

My second theory/excuse is that spring has finally arrived and there’s so much more to do. It’s time to get out on the golf course. The NHL playoffs have started, which is taking up most of my evenings (Go Habs Go!). My social calendar is usually pretty empty, but April has been a busy month with a “Tragically Hip” concert, a trip to Niagara-on-the-Lake with my wife to see “Sweet Charity”, and a blues concert by “Buddy Guy”.

My third theory/excuse is that my new novel will be in a slightly different genre than my previous ones. My previous books have all been mystery/suspense novels. The new one is titled “The Back Nine” and is about life after fifty. There will still be some mystery elements in it, but it will be much more introspective (at least, I think it will be).

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t have a lot of ideas for the book. The problem is that whenever I write something, I decide that it’s crap and delete it the next day and start over. I’ve never spent more time leaning on the delete key.

So, what do I do now? Do I force myself to continue writing in the hope that an interesting story will appear? Like they say, you can edit crap but you can’t edit a blank page. Or do I take a break and wait for the story to come to me when it is ready?

Answer: I have no idea.