Sunday, April 03, 2011

Grant year, week 13: writing under difficult circumstances

This has been probably my worst week so far. The past fortnight actually. Even though I did a lot of words last week, it's the most detached I've felt from Skin Deep. And I think a lot of those words will be extensively rewritten.

My mum is sick. She was down in Brisbane for her radium and so I caught up with her on Friday (which is normally my writing day). We had a really good (emotionally draining) catch-up.

Some writers thrive on stress. Writing is where they go to escape. I'm not one of those writers. I find it really difficult to write when things are rocky on the home front.

I also tend to think 'why bother?'. It's even harder than usual to find the drive to write when, in reality, it's probably the least substantial thing I do. What I mean by that is, I could stop writing this novel right now and no-one would suffer. There's plenty of people writing novels.

However, mum (like a lot of mums, probably) is my number one fan (and not in that creepy Misery way). At many stages, she has had far more faith in me than I have had in myself. And she has said she wants to read Skin Deep. So I've got a bit of extra motivation to kick on and get this draft done. :)

And it hasn't been all gloom and doom this week. A friend and colleague of mine, who has completed the (by all accounts) fantastic WEP course out at UQ, has offered to do a structural edit on Skin Deep.

And I did still get my 5,000 this week, so I'm still ahead of the game.

Posted via email from garykemble's posterous

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