All the Time in the World to Write but..

I resigned last year so I could write full-time. It’s not happening quite as I envisaged, or planned. Probably because there was no plan.

Letting life take its course has always appealed to me. A hippie resides in my soul somewhere and can be counted on to lead me happily astray but the bohemian life isn’t working now. Boho No Go.

It appears that I suffer from several false beliefs. A life spent rebelling against constriction, timetables, external prompts and obligations had left me unable to internally motivate myself. What an irony.

It never occurred to me that I had to relearn how to live my days in order to achieve what I want. Once I was ‘free’ to do as I pleased, the writing was going to materialise, because it had time to exist, develop and blossom. Beforehand, writing had to be squashed into narrow corridors of time: holidays, weekends or an evening when no other obligations beckoned.

Even thoughI have material to write, I didn’t get to the desk. Instead, I found myself everywhere else like I am programmed to continue doing ‘those other things’ that had to come before writing. The balance has to shift to enable writing to move into pole position. A friend once said to me that to be successful, a writer must become ‘obsessive’ about writing. At the time, I nodded in agreement without feeling…