I can’t actually remember how long ago it was – I could check and maybe I will later, that I undertook a challenge to write fifty thousand words (yes, 50,000+ words) in the month of November. It was an international challenge, no prize but the satisfaction of having completed the challenge of writing at least 1,668 a day from November 1st to November 30th. I had seen the hype about the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) which had launched in 1997, for a couple of years. However, it was only when I gave up the day job that I seriously considered it. It took me a couple of years to grasp the writing nettle, maybe in 2013.
For a little while before that I’d had the rumblings of a story – about a family of four brothers (but no idea beyond that) – four very different adult blokes with the same parents. I had found a surname for them while out for a drive in Essex with my cousin and passed a sign to the village of Radwinter. So November 1st 2013, I started to write for NaNoWriMo, and gosh, the words just poured out of my fingers! I was amazed! I not only completed the challenge with days to spare, but I continued to write until the story was complete. Obviously it took a lot of work and a lot of editing after that, but the following year “Radwinter” appeared as a Kindle book, and then as a paperback. I had already published “Farholm”, “Flipside”, “The Stalking of Rosa Czekov”, and “night vision”, so the actual process was familiar to me (and a lot easier than it is now!!)
So back to challenges, writing challenges. After NaNoWriMo, even while I was writing other things, I continued to set challenges, just to add variety and to test myself with different genres, “100/100/100” – a hundred blogs of exactly a hundred words in a hundred days, 3 collections of stories with two other writers, and a couple of other self-challenges as well. I won’t say any of it was easy, it wasn’t although some flowed more than others, but there was none that I came to a full stop with, none in which I really encountered anything which could properly be called “writers’ block”. Until now.
I need to give myself a good talking to, a good mental shaking, and set to and write. In a way it doesn’t matter what I write because I know eventually i will get back into the swing and be properly telling tales again. However I must be strict with myself, not make excuses, even if I’m away from home (at a cousin’s wedding next week, for example) I can still write. I won’t count the words of my blogs here as I have managed to continue with this, however, I may share some of my challenge story/stories if I’m giving an update of my progress.
My featured image is my little Mojo.
Signing off now to start my own NoWriMo!
