A close up of the swans

It’s still really miserable outside. The weather has been appalling lately. In saying that, it is winter but it’s been unusually wet. Normally we get a lot of rain, but also a lot of frosty, snowy days. There’s still time I suppose. It was snowing earlier in the week, but it soon turned to sleet.

Anyway, how are you all? Hope you’re fine and dandy. There’s not much been happening chez moi, so I thought I’d talk about writing…more specifically writer’s block. These are questions I’ve been asked numerous times – how do you keep writing a whole book? And – do you ever suffer from writer’s block? The first question is easy to answer – I make myself do it. There are times when I don’t want to write, but I force myself to sit down and plan it out. Then I write it up.

For writer’s block, what works for me is taking a ‘mental runny’. A ‘runny’ is something we did as kids – if we were scared to do something we would take a ‘runny’ at it and just do it (ie just run at it and not think about it). I do that with writing…I just write anything knowing I can fix it at a later date. I don’t need to write a cracking first line to start writing…I just write any old thing and fix it after I’ve written the entire book and am going back to the first edit. I find if I edit as I go along I rarely get passed the first chapter. Hope this helps.

Right have to go…got the school run to do. Til next time.

Dawn xxxx