Friday, January 30, 2009

Stop!

Okay, we're into week - how many, 11? - of not working on my novel, apart from that one day I spent banging my head on the keyboard. I am keeping busy, and being optimistic that this too shall pass and I will get back to my fiction-creatorship eventually, but I can't help but look warily at people who just stopped. Writers who write one marvelous book and then - silence. Or maybe write a few and then get interested in something else and go on being interested in other things and never feel the need to write fiction again.

In my mountain of back issues of Vogue Knitting I found an interview with Barbara Walker, whose Treasuries of Knitting Patterns are still highly coveted, not least by me. She talks about exactly that... or maybe not exactly that. After producing these wonderful, exhaustive, groundbreaking books requiring immense amounts of research and compilation, she said she is completely done with knitting, apart from doing a little in the morning over breakfast. She's moved on to other subjects. But she hasn't moved on from her real passion, has she? She's still researching - and that's the passion.

I love all kinds of writing, but fiction is at the top of the heap. So even though I'm doing other things, and my brain is firmly locked down on the question of what my good friend Iris will do next, I'm sure the flow will resume again sometime. And soon would be good!

1 comment:

JMS said...

I haven't written "The Great American Novel" (so-to-speak) but I've got one brewing. I've written three or four good chapters (I'm especially fond of the first 2, and not so thrilled with the 2nd two) and not I'm stymied. Stuck. At a stand-still.

I know what I want to do, but I haven't been able to sit down for several uninterrupted hours - and pray fervently that the creativity starts to flow again.

I love to write, even if it's nothing more than the drivel of my ordinary life, but it sure does keep me going.

I'm with you - I can't imagine writing ONE novel and then stopping.

"Yep - I've written a book. Now I can stop and try something else!"

Once I've worked through this "block" I intend to keep going, even it it takes me ages between books.

Good luck to you!

Jennifer @
Random Ramblings