Writing: Blocked

I've been really busy this morning. I put the washing machine on a maintenance wash, cleaned the dishwasher and found a new place for the slow cooker to live. See? Busy. I have not been avoiding writing. Nope. Not me. No siree. I just needed to do...stuff. The kind of stuff which could be put off for a few hours, but at the same time needs doing. So I did it. Yay me.

So yes, there's the best part of half a novel lurking, neglected, in my laptop. Sure, I haven't sat down and deliberately lengthened it in a while. But, you know, the skirting won't dust itself. And the puppy absolutely needs training and walking. Plus, I have a sick chicken to tend to.

Ok. I'll level with you. I haven't touched my novel for, ooh, 7 months now. I last worked on it before we moved, way back in March. And now I've reached an impasse. I know it's there, lurking patiently on my hard drive, taking up memory space and biding its time. With just a few mouse clicks I could open that document helpfully titled 'Novel' and all 36, 000 odd words would pop up in front of me. The cursor would be blinking under the last line, hopefully expectant.

Yet I keep finding reasons not to open it. I haven't run out of ideas, or lost sight of where it's going. In fact, the whole book has been written in my head for a few years. I wish I could download it from my head and be done with it. Of course, I can. I just need to open the bloody document and start the transfer. So why don't I?

Well, mainly it's because I'm a little secretly scared that when I read back what I have so far, I'll realise it's utter bilge. That those sentences which I thought at the time were well crafted will read like a chimp banging away on a typewriter. I'm a bit worried that the passages which frightened me as I was writing them will just be a bit...'meh' in the cold light of day. Distance gives perspective, and all that.

So instead of actually writing anything, or even rereading it, I spend my time cleaning things that don't need cleaning and researching 'writer's block' via google. Which makes me a bit of a prat, really. Does anyone feel like giving me a gentle kick in the derriere?