Juiced On Writing

I’ve dreamt of houses since a little child. New houses, old houses I used to live in, insides – sometimes, outsides – sometimes. In my dreams, I’ve set scenes in houses of memory, or created entirely new houses for my dream-character to explore.

Dream Dictionaries would suggest that dreaming of houses signifies times of change in our lives. And although I can certainly identify with that, I also dream of houses during times of some stability in my own life. I figure I should have been an interior designer or perhaps an architect, but never got around to it. Houses, for me, are a peaceful and invigorating dream, and many of those houses I dream of stay with me many years after the dream.

I have been thinking a lot about houses lately, and how they pertain to my current state of writing also.

I’ve noticed a few more houses in my dreams of late. This is not surprising – on a personal level there are great changes afoot, with the welcoming of another child into the family this coming Autumn (hopefully). This will change everything – drastically. So, my dreams feature a few houses to explore lately.

But my writing has altered also lately, as anyone reading this blog may well have noticed. Part of that is circumstantial – I have been busy building up entries on another blog I have recently started, leaving me with little time or inclination to simply write about writing – on this blog. Instead, I have been actually writing, and a lot of it.

But most of my lack of fictional writing is seasonal. I commented on this on a previous blog of mine (before Juiced on Writing was born in August 2008), at around the same time of the year last year.

It’s summer here in the U.K. And being a part-time worker, part-time writer, and full time mother, many will be nodding their head when reading what I am about to list. Because summer time in the U.K. – with school age children, means fetes, fairs, carnivals, school trips out on buses and walks, sports days, library visits, green days, stalls to set up, volunteer parent helping, and if we’re lucky – family time outside in the sunshine, with barbeques and picnics to participate in. Oh, and swimming (lessons), ballet or dance recitals, football tournaments, village parades, community picnics….and I’ve probably forgotten something else I’m supposed to be arranging around also, I’m sure.

Then, there’s the summer school holidays, of course, where our children are home with us, and working parents attempt to take a few days or weeks off work to spend time holidaying with their family.

Last year I planned to write and revise a novel in June or July, and never accomplished it. This year, I’ve learnt from the experience. I am not only demotivated in spending time writing, or even being entirely inspired to write fiction at this time of the year, but there just isn’t the time available to do so.

Fiction work, for me, involves sitting down for long hours. That’s how I best do it. When I do write fiction, it’s in long day-jobs. I lose all sense of time, even forget to eat mostly, sit there typing until my bladder protests just a little too loudly, forcing me to get up and take a break. That’s how it works for me.

I can do quick spurts – like blog posts, for instance. But because I’m a novelist (by heart), I have found that I just can not write or edit a novel in the summer. Period.

I can plan for it, research for it, but not write it. And I certainly don’t want to sit down for only an hour smuggled out of the day, to start on, and ruin my next novel.

Which explains my current reluctance to be pressurised into this by various writing groups. I joined up on one which meets at 10pm Mondays and Fridays within the virtual second life environment. Although I enjoyed it immensely, they have lately changed expectations towards monthly goals, where we have to give a word-count. And suddenly I felt pressurised into providing a word-count.

I don’t plan word-counts for blog posts, and wasn’t about to be hammered into writing a novel when I just knew I didn’t want to. I avoided going to the writing meet last week, but reluctantly showed my face this Monday at 10:10pm, only to find that nobody else was there anyway.

Maybe others out there also have trouble writing in the summer time, huh?

There would be various ways around such target setting, but I’ve also found that meeting at 10pm my time on a couple of evenings a week is denting into my own short family and relaxation life immensely. Even if I do happen to be on second life, I’m normally there with a mission or even sharing it with a friend who happens to be my husband in real life.

I have arranged my writing life around my spare time – currently that sits housed in school time, where my child is at school, and I also am not working. But with Second Life, there are no writing meetings utilising that time also, so I am hankered by the virtual timezones ordering such things.

Looking back at all of this, it is not a complaint, but an identification of the various writing spaces or houses which my own writing lives within. Houses have their walls broken down sometimes, and houses operate within the world-orientated dynamics of seasons, or even timezones. And sometimes, we move house.

For the summer, my writing has moved house. In the Autumn, due to personal circumstances, the writing house may well need another drastic adjustment – perhaps even a complete continental shift, involving a cycle of project management, a few cycles of trial and error (or test and fault reporting) and several moving vans and a postal redirection.

I hope to have my new novel researched and planned out to move into November’s NaNoWriMo writing house, and over the next few months, hope to retain the post quality (perhaps not quantity) on this and my newer blog. And those few goals are enough to keep me decorating my own writing house at least.

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