WHY WRITE A BLOG by Val Tyler

With only a few days to go, I begin to wonder what should be the subject of this month’s blog. I’ve been distracted for a while over our pending house move. We have sold and, this week, have finished negotiating on the house we want to buy. But is it the right house? Will the vendors change their minds and pull out? Will the surveyor find something terminally wrong with it? Will our buyers change their minds? I like them enormously and trust them to follow through on their word, but we’ve been let down before.

How many ways can a house-move go wrong?

You might be finding me just a tad pessimistic, but we have had more than our fair share of problems in recent months. Even the estate agent who is trying to sell us the house of our choice has been economical with the truth as well as telling us glaring inaccuracies about both house and vendor. I’m rapidly losing faith in human nature and it has me wondering if we are destined never to move. But move we must and so we plough on and I try to keep a semblance of order around me, this blog being part of that order.

Usually, a few days before my blog is due I begin to wonder what to write. Occasionally, there is an idea drifting around my head. Far more often, I don’t have the slightest notion what to write. My family has often asked me why I keep going and for a while I didn’t have an answer. I wrote the blog because I said I would, simple as that. It was only today that I realised why this blog is important and why I would urge any writer to consider one.

I have a manuscript with my agent at the moment. Almost as soon as I sent if off, a new idea came to me. I’ve started my new story and, amid all the house problems, I promised myself to write a chapter each day and see where it takes me. I kept that up for three whole days.

Usually I’m good at self-imposed deadlines, but with so much going on I’ve fallen by the wayside. I tell myself that if the story is good enough it will stay in my head for a year or two. In a few months I might be in my new house and then I might be able to concentrate on writing. In the meantime, I have to survive.

But how am I surviving? If I’m not writing down my ideas, clearly I’m not surviving well, and it occurred to me that not so many minutes ago I had absolutely no idea what to write for this blog. Now I have nearly four hundred words and that, my friends, is, for me, the point of writing a monthly blog.

Every four weeks I must sit down and write. It can be any topic (as long as it is related to writing or books), but it must be written and it must be written well enough to post and it must be on time.

It’s the discipline. Sitting here, finding the time to write my blog makes me realise that there are many jobs on my to-do list that won’t affect the price of eggs if I don’t get them done until tomorrow.

This is such a relief.

As soon as I finish writing this month’s offering, I will go back and read chapters one to three. Then I shall write chapter four. It might not be well written, but that doesn’t matter at this stage. At least not to me. It’s the ideas that matter. I must write them down. I can embellish and edit for months to come until I have something worthwhile. It’s the way I work.

And so, if you’ll excuse me I must get a move on. I’ve got a chapter to write.

I'M MOVING HOUSE by Val Tyler

I’m moving house

It’s always a traumatic time, especially when changing locations.

We will be leaving this:

It’s all to do with circumstances. Life changes and we have to accommodate those changes as best we can. Consequently, we will be moving from rural Wales to the bustle of South East England.

There are problems, the most obvious being cost. Houses are much more expensive there. Our new house will be half the size and twice the cost. Financially, it will be tough and that’s a worry, but it’s not the biggest worry.

My friends and relations promise me that our perfect house is out there. But we like quirky, odd, different, weird and fascinating. As yet, we’ve not found it, but neither have we sold and so that is not my biggest worry either.

I will sorely miss the dear friends who have shared the last dozen years with us, but we shall be returning to old friends who have stayed close in spirit even though we have been one hundred and fifty miles apart, and so that it not my biggest worry either.

What I spend my time fretting about is inspiration. I fear it will not come to me in the town like it does in the country. Right now, I am surrounded by fields, horses, sheep, wild life and endless, eternal, sublime tranquillity.

 

In the town I will hear traffic, people and all the turmoil that accompanies life. I won’t hear owls hooting at night nor sheep contentedly chewing by day. I won’t have the farmer passing my gate with a happy, ‘Hello,’ nor will I be eating newly laid eggs.

How will I survive?

The answer is, of course, I will. The contents of my writing room will be transported to a new, if smaller, room and icloud will still be holding all my stories and story ideas. But will I be happy? If I am not happy, will I be able to write? And if I am unable to write, what will become of me?

Supposing my muse stays among the trees and the lush green hills. Supposing I arrive at my new home bereft of the basic inspiration that makes getting up in the morning so exciting, that fills my waking hours with meaning and interest.

The summers here are idyllic, the winters magical. Will that enchantment desert me?

  

And so here I am sitting at my computer, catching glimpses of the foals playing opposite and listening to the wind rustling the leaves. The cows drowsily call to one another and my stomach churns with fear that the characters I have created out here will not come to me over there.

It’s silly to worry. After all, it can take years to sell a house. But we’ve been very happy here and I’ve been very creative and…

Big, deep sigh.

I’m moving house.