Tuesday 29 March 2011

Why I haven't really been here

It seems like ages since I said I was going to have a fairly quiet time as far as this blog went, but I didn't really think I was going to be quite so quiet. So here I am with a bit of an update.

I've been asked many times what I plan to write for 2011, so I'll start there.

People who asked me that early in the year were invariably told that I was taking January to think about it. By the end of January I answered that I was going to get stuck into rewriting the novel I wrote during NaNoWriMo 2009. I spent a few weeks so excited about this I wrote a heap of notes about a new ending, did some research and basically spent a lot of time thinking about it.

But it wore off and I was back to not feeling all that bothered to push myself this year. Because, quite frankly, I feel tired. After years of pushing myself and being super-busy most of the time, especially with writing related things, I'm kind of having a year off. You probably already know I've stepped away from page seventeen.

I sort of have two writing goals for the year, although one is not really a goal. The real goal is to submit to places I wouldn't normally submit to which, in some ways really means places that don't have closing dates.

The not-really-a-goal goal is to not have any goals. I'm not going to push myself to write anything. That doesn't mean I won't be writing, because not writing would necessitate being locked away in a safe place with padded walls and/or medication, but I'm not going to push myself. I've decided this means a few things.

The first is that I won't be hard on myself if I have weeks (or months) where I don't do any writing. Another is that I feel freed up to have a go at writing styles/genres that I might not normally make time for. But basically, I'm just taking some time to chill out. And so far, it's been nice.

And when it comes down to it, I can't honestly say there's less notes in my journal, even if I'm not making so much use of them.

Meanwhile, I'll try not to take quite so long to come back here, and maybe next time I'll tell you a bit about my new addiction, err, hobby.