One-Trick Pony

The 25th January 2016 is the first anniversary of the date I self-published my début novel, International Relations (I should be writing this post on Monday, but nobody reads blogs on Mondays, something to do with having a job? I know, selfish. So…here we are…on a Saturday). Anyhoo, I thought to myself, do I really want to write an anniversary post about that? And the answer was a resounding ‘no’. I don’t especially care that a year has gone by. And if I don’t, there’s no reason that you should. But what I do want to talk about is where one is supposed to go from here. And by ‘one’, I mean me. In the very near future, this trilogy will be done and dusted. It will be time to write something entirely new. The problem is, as the saying goes, I got nothin‘.

The real issue I’m struggling with, is that it was such an incredibly long time ago that I came up with the idea for my current series, that I’ve forgotten the process. I can’t remember how those initial sparks of inspiration even come about. I can’t imagine I ever sat down and drew a lovely pie-chart or a graph or a spider diagram mapping out what I wanted to achieve. I’ve always flown by the seat of my pants. The only thing I do recall was that I’d just had my first child, I was on maternity leave and I wanted to constructively fill my baby’s two hour daily nap time with something creative. And I know I called on childhood ideas from when I used to write in my teens. I sat down in our home-office (we stopped having an office once my second child was born) and I pulled up a Microsoft word document and that was the starting point. But that was some time ago – and what does a 44 year old woman actually write about, I wonder? I’m vastly more experienced and worldly-wise than I was. Well, y’know, kinda’…

I have become irritated with the phrase, ‘writers block’. It’s overused, a bit hackneyed and doesn’t really sum up a feeling I’ve ever experienced. If I had a story plan, I’d be good to go. Once I know roughly what I’m supposed to be writing about, I’m a bit of a machine. I only suffer with ‘lack of time’. But you see, for my future venture, I don’t have a plan and I’m wondering whether I really ought to? I’m actually putting off sitting down and brainstorming a strategy about what to write next. I keep telling myself, ‘well, I’m a starter-completer (it’s a thing) and I simply must finish this project before I can contemplate a new one’. I’m just slightly concerned that when I do get around to researching the next project, nothing will be forthcoming. Nada. Perhaps that is writers block, but I really feel I just need the initial idea and then I’ll be off like a rabbit out of the traps. I mean, it isn’t like I don’t know how to write any more; I’m editing all the time – rewriting and adding in huge chunks of story. But putting together something completely new with a completely different backdrop and completely different characters? Eeek.

The only thing I’m certain about is that I don’t want to write a romantic novel next time. I don’t particularly want to be pigeon-holed or typecast or boxed into a corner. I can be diverse. I think. I’ve discovered in the last year that I can write really banal and inane blogs that have virtually nothing to do with love or relationships. I know, I was surprised too. So that’s an indication to me that I’m capable of other things. Not that there’s anything wrong with romantic fiction; it’s the biggest seller of all genres and it’s vastly underrated at times. I for one was bored of reading bad romantic fiction so thought I’d have a stab at it myself. And there’s an art to getting the chemistry between two people right. It’s astounding to me that some fiction in that genre lacks that chemistry at all; the relationships frustratingly rushed or highly unlikely or just a bit disappointing. I’m not saying I’ve perfected that art, but when you do (and I reiterate, I’m not saying I did [but I think I did]), it’s like alchemy. A certain kind of magic happens if you get it right. But like it or not, the powers that be don’t rate romantic fiction. There ain’t no Booker or Pulitzer Prize for the likes of us (maybe because we’re a bit too free and easy with the word ain’t[its okay, I’m a cockney – and it’s my birthright]). But that’s not the only reason I want to cross the genre-border. I don’t read a great deal of romantic fiction, although I’m always happy when an author crowbars a romantic dalliance in. I mainly read fantasy, if I’m honest, and wonder if I would have any aptitude for writing that. Although I’ve a interest in writing murder mystery too. Which to choose, which to choose…

Anyway, maybe it doesn’t matter right now. This current project isn’t done yet so perhaps my ordered, black-and-white brain won’t allow me to move on until it is. Or maybe I am that archetypal one-trick pony; my writing career over before it really started. You just can’t live off one idea for the rest of your life. Maybe I’ll just end up being a blogger – I still, more or less, manage to pull these posts out of the bag at the nth hour (just about). But I love and always have been in love with escapism, and there’s nothing like the feeling of creating your own imaginary place with your own imaginary people who live in it. It even surpasses reading fiction (which I also love, just to be clear). I hope that need to create another world, that desire to invent another reality when my own is a bit too much to cope with, will win out in the end. I guess only time will tell. Right, I’m off to write a highly detailed food shopping list, because that’s about as much creativity as I can muster. That’s right, I still got nothin‘.