Struggling to navigate the halfway point - Tracy Darnton

DISCLAIMER *Any publisher or editor who [has signed/is contemplating] a publishing contract with me should completely ignore all of the following.

I’m at the halfway point.

Wading through treacle.

Self-doubt.

Imposter syndrome.

The “why did I make this book so complex?” stage.

The “why don’t I write really short books with basic plots?” stage.

The “please, will someone else write my book for me?” stage.

Shall I watch ‘The Wife’ film again?

*Spoiler Alert* I want Glenn Close to write all my books and win the Nobel Prize for Literature for me. I could go to Stockholm again and eat cinnamon rolls.

I interrupt my son’s revision to ask him what cinnamon rolls are called in Swedish. Kanelbullar. That's a nice word. Kanelbullar.

Full-on procrastination cleaning out the fridge, hoovering the cutlery drawer, watching ‘The Thick of It’ on iPlayer, dusting my desk and sharpening pencils.

I am so good at procrastinating.

I am good at something! Yay me.

I take it up a gear.

I count the days before book delivery date and do a pie chart to show how many are possible writing days. I calculate the average word count I need to meet my contractual target. I adjust my figures to allow for sickness, family obligations, a holiday… I wonder if I should have used my A’ levels in Maths and Further Maths in a more constructive way.

I like graphs. I'd forgotten how much I like charts and graphs.

Shall I forget writing and become a statistician? Yes, my life will be so much easier. Won’t it?

I complete a memory research request on voice-recognition. I am delighted that my short-term memory is excellent at discerning chiming bells and voices.  But I worry that I performed badly on today’s long-term test on voices I heard ten days ago. Old voice? New voice?

I interrupt my son’s revision to ask him if I have performed any better than a random monkey randomly answering the fifty-fifty old or new voice questions. He explains probability to me and makes me doubt my aforementioned A' levels in Maths and Further Maths.

I cannot become a statistician after all. I have to carry on being an author.

Also, bad news, I am not as proficient as a random monkey tapping at the keyboard.

I write lists of questions in my notebook to make me feel better about plot holes in my novel.

I give the questions a heading: The Unsurmountables. I like the heading. I picture an action movie with Sean Connery and The Rock.

I check if ‘unsurmountable’ is a word and the difference between ‘insurmountable’. The WikiDiff entry makes no sense whatsoever. I should rewrite it.

I worry about my cast list. Too old? How old is Sean Connery?

1930! Sean Connery was born in 1930. He is too old for my action movie. I shall recast.

I laugh at a tweet with a funny picture from author Marie Basting about two and a half hours writing and her word count has gone up by seven words. Her tweet is longer than her WIP output for the day. I have a brief warm glow that there’s a whole community of #amwriting people out there feeling like this. 

Or is just me? That’s the self-doubt again. I check my word count so far for the day. Marie has beaten me.

I interrupt my son’s revision so he can thrash me at table tennis. I feel slightly better.

I buck up, eat a biscuit, and tell myself that it will pass. 

I pick up my notebook and turn to The Unsurmountables. Jodie Comer. I shall cast her. Boom! I am current and hip. I add more insurmountable questions to the list.

I look at The Truth About Lies on the shelf and wonder how on earth I wrote it and ponder the nature of selective memory that has removed the bad times to make sure it is not my only novel.

Logic tells me this stage will pass again and become a distant, buried memory.

I write this blog.

I sneak up on my novel late at night when it’s not expecting me to put in an appearance. I start typing. I put one sentence after another and watch the word count slowly, slowly grow.

Tracy Darnton is the author of The Truth About Lies, shortlisted for The Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2019. She has an MA in Writing for Young People.

On Kale, Walnut Whips, Walking and Writing by Sheena Wilkinson

I keep a diary and, when I’m at home rather than travelling or doing events, each day reads pretty much the same – writing, walking, reading, playing guitar, sometimes a bit of crochet and TV. Something sensational to read on the train it isn’t. I include my rough word count and recently I’ve been logging my steps too, which gives my diary a sort of Bridget Jones ring. Without the cigarettes and the unsuitable men. 

My usual walk towards the end of the day -- beautiful but a bit DARK

One of my habits is porridge for breakfast, winter and summer, home or away. I’m by no means as healthy an eater as I ought to be, but I reckon that shovelling some oats in first thing means that at least I start the day well, whatever temptations I might succumb to later (eight biscuits and a walnut whip the other day.)

It’s the same principle that’s always sent me to my desk in the mornings, so that I can get writing straight away. This means I have a decent word count done by lunchtime so that even if work then has to stop (often for nice reasons like meeting someone), at least I’ve started the day well. I know lots of writers friends who begin their day with a walk, but I’ve always liked to keep my walk for after-writing, when I enjoy it more, knowing that work is done for the day. But for the last couple of weeks I’ve had a quick morning walk before work as well. I’m not prepared to get up earlier or to read faster at the breakfast table, so this means hitting my desk about half an hour later every day – the very reason I’d always been reluctant to walk in the mornings. 

The walks themselves are not spectacular; they are simply on the roads around my house and never more than half an hour. But I always see something of interest – today, a field of kale (or something; I’m not an expert as the walnut whip detail above might suggest); an inquisitive horse; a derelict cottage completely choked by foliage. And there's more light than I often manage by the time I get out for my afternoon walk at this time of year. 

Less dramatic morning walk 

I’m not getting less writing done. When I break for lunch I’ve achived as much as I used to do when I started earlier. But I’m working faster, partly because my brain is more fired up, and partly because the walk itself, by literally taking me somewhere else (though not very far from my house) helps me not to get distracted by emails and admin – I’m definitely more focussed and more prepared to let them wait till the afternoon. 

And I’m still having my ‘proper’ walk in the last afternoon. I don’t know how long this new routine will last. The weather has been kind lately and I have very little on in January taking me away from home, but for the moment it’s become a great way to start the day. And gives me something else to log in that very exciting diary. 

Dusky forest -- another typical afternoon walk