Cardinal sin

I've committed a writing cardinal sin; one I always knew I was prone to and indeed one I've succumbed to in the past. I have started a new novel even though this current one is far from finished. I hang my head in shame. I will try to not do it again in future. And I realise already I am as likely to keep to that commitment this time as I was when last I made it.

The culprit is a science fiction novel set in Africa. I had this idea about a week ago for a novel with a pretty weird central concept. It's slowly mulled in my head and many pages (22 at last count) of a nice new fresh notebook have been covered in my scrawl. They won't be the last to be defaced. Now normally that is enough to stop my getting sidetracked from my current WiP.

I just write down some thoughts at the end of each day into one of the notebooks on the shelf next to my side of the bed and it keeps them from interfering when I reach the keyboard the next day. Only it didn't work today.

The reason was I had a killer idea for an introduction and wanted to get it down on (electronic) paper before my mind lost it. So this afternoon I saw down and allowed it to have its hour or so in the spotlight. 1,495 words later and the introduction was complete and I could once again return to the YA supernatural story The Stairs Lead Down.

Thankfully I was able to get my head back into it and add three scenes totalling 1,629 words to that one also. Not a bad writing day. And I'm not finished yet. I have the desire to write at least one more scene - hopefully two.

Progress on this YA novel has been pretty good. Today is day fifteen since starting. In that time I've taken it from zero words to 30,721. That's an average of over 2,000 per day (2,048 if you're being precise). It's not an average I have any chance of maintaining.

You see this is the last night of the pantomime my wife has been Music Director of. Tomorrow afternoon and evening she will be in the house and we will be catching up on the TV shows we've not watched (Elementary, X-Files, Agent Carter and the like). Then this week she will be out for just one evening rather than all of them.

This is good in most ways - I like spending time with my wife after all. I did marry her for a reason. and that reason holds as true to day as it ever did - more so in fact. So if she is in the house and not needing space to work on music I will be with her. Writing average might go down but it is so worth it.

So what I should do right now is stop writing in this blog and get the heck on with it (notice PG-13 cursing. Or is heck U rated?)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A writing update

Review of Ray Garton - Bestial

Attempts at regaining the writing saddle