Novel Ideas #8 - Let It Be

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I spend a lot of time stressing about working towards long term goals with my writing. As a consequence, I heartily berate myself for straying from the path. This means I convince myself that if I'm not working on my novel, or on a piece for a competition, or some kind of collection, then it's not worth it.

But this is becoming counter-productive. I've barely put pen to paper in the last couple of months. In fairness, I've been really busy with a lot of out of hours festival work, but this is no longer an excuse.

Sure, I keep the blog going. I really enjoy writing about the books I've been reading, or (as has happened more and more recently) rambling about what I've been up to.

But I need to be less prescriptive about my output; I actually need to treat writing as the creative, enjoyable activity it is, rather than seeing it as another item on my 'to-do' list (eg. must write a novel). This may sound silly to any writers reading this, but I'm so serious about my writing ambitions that I seem to be forgetting that the best work often comes from simply sitting down and letting the words come.

I've been ignoring the little ideas and lines that come into my head, instead of just deciding to run with them, and see what happens.

This weekend, I will find time to simply sit down and write, and whatever will be, will be.