So I am all out of excuses now, about not having time to write. I have every Saturday, and long evenings stretching into night in the spare room. It is time to do this properly.
I have started by sorting out all my files, the bits and pieces of poems and prose, the seeds and germs of stories. The two novels that are nothing more than ideas and a few thousand words.
Why now, you wonder? Well it's all part of a wider plan. More on that in the weeks to come. Suffice to say for now that an end is in sight. Still quite far away right now, but close enough to start making an actual, concrete plan. With a couple of key milestones to break the journey.
One of the parts of the plan is writing. This is the only thing I've every really, really wanted to do. For all the success I've had in the day-job, it's not the same as fulfilment. Writing is something I need to do, I have to do.
It'll be a shame if I'm crap at it, won't it? But at least it gives me an excuse to do absolutely anything I damn well please, all in the name of research. A poetry friend of mine once said when I was going through a desperately dark time - "think of all this as raw material". That immediately made it better, if only because it started to place a distance between me and the stuff, as I thought about how to write it, and started to get a sense of proportion and a more clinical viewpoint.
I'm aiming to write my postcards two or three times a week (at least) so if you're interested in updates from my tour around the inner landscapes, do drop by.
