Nulla dies sine linea

Balzac, I think, had this written in letters of gold around his study.  I don't know who said it originally - it sounds like Pliny the Younger or someone a bit dutiful like that.  It would be nice to say that this was my policy - but I would rather have two or three extensive writing sessions in a week, than write a line every day.  I suppose I could fiddle with something every day.  Also, I don't usually work on weekends.

But if 2012 is going to be the year when I finally tell myself "writing is my job, and I have to go to work every day", then I need to think how I am going to do it. 

I am not a big afficionado of housework, but I do have a large house and a small garden that require some attention.  I cannot rely on my husband to always clean the kitchen floor...I know how even a loathesome activity like housework can become a warmly embraced displacement activity.

I also feel, although I would love to give it up completely, that Ramsgate Arts is going to have to do with less of my time...If I could limit what I do to 3.5 hours a week I could say that, for example, Thursday afternoon would be Arts time.   I think perhaps, one hour of housework from 9-10 - followed by as much writing and associated activtiy as I can cram in every morning - then, if the mood is on me, more writing in the afternoons.  Paperwork etc. can be dealt with in the afternoons.  Cooking can mostly be done in the early morning/late afternoon...

I think that would work - having a structure is good.   I haven't included any time for exercise - the trouble is, I feel the morning is the best time for everything, and going swimming or for a walk is best done then, but actually, will need to be done in an afternoon instead. 

One thing that will prevent the rapid adoption of this timetable is the need to spend a lot of time sorting out the spare room for new student, coming in January.   A total re-decoration is necessary.  A lot of furniture will have to be moved, and I will be spending way too much time sanding things down.  Oh well, it will be great when it's finished. It will provide me with a potential income of 5,000 pa, so it's worth it.

Work in Progress

Since this is a new blog a bit of back story is needed:

Currently I have a completed 99,000 word novel called The Romantic Feminist.  An agent is reading the whole thing - she has not got back to me yet.   I live in the irrational belief that it will be in print by October 2013.  It has recently be re-written in 3rd person, and needs some tweaking - it was done, but now I realise some things will have to be re-done, since abandoning 1st person has left me with some clunky narrator bits... and the ex-husband needs a radical makeover.

The novel I am working on is called Conscience, set in WW1 and beyond it concerns the emotional upsets and qualms of a young clergyman... about doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. It's got to about 45,000 but needs a lot of factual research, chiefly about the RAMC during WW1.  It has a terrific story (really) - which is also broadly true - based on my grandfather's first marriage.   It will sell fantastically well - I am absolutely certain, and it needs to hit the WW1 centenary market. 

I have another partly written novel, called 17 Years.  It's only about 30,000 words, set, like the Romantic Feminist, from 1970s to the present day, and deals with love, sibling rivalry and emotional cock-ups.  I would like to work on it, but don't know if I will have time.  The problem is that I wish to do something very tricksy with the structure - to have parallel chapters following alternative choices, but I am terrified - it's not new, but it would be difficult - could I achieve it?

Then there is the non-fiction: there is only one project at the moment, and I am gathering material for it in a very unstructured way - i.e. if I find something relevant, I put it on the list.  The book provisionally entitled Heaven and Hell will deal with Western ideas about Golden Ages/Utopias and Apocalypses - and how humanity has always had some threat it has been living under - and how it has always harked back to some Golden Age when things were better.  I will be starting with Hesiod - and I will be recognising that other cultures have these ideas too - but that I am not competent to deal with them.

There is a longer term project Berenice which I have been writing since I was about 24.... I got a good book for Christmas to re-ignite my research - but again, no time for that this year (probably).  Also, there is a young adult/old child book Tapestry which I might revive if there was any interest.   Failing this, I will start writing Gothic chicklit....

Why this? Why now?

Last March I started a blog because my local branch of the Society of Authors suggested no serious writer could exist without a blog.  Unfortunately I didn't really understand what I was meant to be doing there - i.e. marketing my writing.   I managed to write the whole thing for about 10 months without once mentioning my published work Blarney Castle: its history meaning and function so clearly it was a failure.  

The blog turned into a diary of sorts, with occasional forays into opinion columns.  It was not a good place to market my work!  Although it did contain some very impassioned bits of writing, it contained TMI about my emotional/marital crises, and therefore the antithesis of a good marketing exercise (which I understand to require a sunny spin on everything).

So this blog is going to be a hard-edged marketing tool (collapses into giggles) to force people to take my work seriously.  I do actually take my writing seriously, it is almost the only thing I take really seriously and can even have sense of humour failures about. 

The problem is for years I haven't given it the time and energy and there has been too much else going on, and now I am taking it really seriously, and am going to finish another book this year, and research some non-fiction.  Everything else I have been doing can take care of itself, or whither away like the state .... I am going to have to do something I dislike this year, that is, to let people down.  I started various enterprises to make some money - I made about £450 from marketing/PR  £200 from catering and about £1700 from "hospitality", I can fit in hospitality with writing - since I have to do some housework and cook, but I cannot fit other stuff in - because the amount of time I spent trying to earn those marketing millions was way out of proportion.  And I was hating it, and beginning to feel quite angry with my "business partner".  So, banish these activities, get some foreign students into the house and write like the wind....