I’ve had a bit of a dry January. Not that apocryphal one that borderline alcoholics and fitness obsessives have made popular in the last decade or so. ‘I shall not partake of strong drink for thirty-one days after the excesses of the holidays...’ as the self-righteous pledge goes, made by those who buy into the fad. Not that there is anything wrong with doing so btw. I am just a little sick of people telling me they are doing so as if not having a drink for a month somehow makes them a better person… If you feel the need to make a big thing to people about not drinking for a month, then perhaps you should consider what that says about your drinking habits the rest of the year… But I digress…

The dry January I have been having has actually been a longer dry spell than just one month. It started around mid-November, just after my failed NaNoWriMo, with pressures of both work and social life causing me to put the writing to one side for a while. I have not put pen to paper or stroked a keyboard in anger since then. This is not writer’s block I should add. To suffer from writer’s block, you actually have to write. I just took a step away from writing for a while to recharge my batteries and do other things for a while. Also it very difficult to find a rhythm to your writing habits when you’re assaulted by all side with other things that need to be done. The festive period is never the most productive on the creative front…

Which brings me to now, and the tail end of a drought on the wordsmithery, which includes writing this blog. Like most writers, I need a little discipline when it comes to putting one word in front of another.As Niel Gaiman said, writing when it comes down to it is as easy and as hard as that at the end of the day, but some days that’s harder than others. Somedays you can start with a word and just not finds the motivation to write the next, even when you know what the next word is… Which makes it all too easy to go and do something else for an hour or so, which turns into two, which turns into the rest of the evening. But that doesn’t matter as there is always tomorrow after all… except, of course, tomorrow is always a day away and when tomorrow becomes today there is that thing you wanted to get done so writing can wait little longer…

You see where I am going I am sure. If you let yourself procrastinate, you’ll procrastinate away all those tomorrows that never come. At least, I will. Experience has taught me I need discipline in my writing if I want to actually write. To quote another big name…

Though to be fair, inspiration is not really my problem, its simply applying a bit of self disapline, but to pick another quote out of the air from Mr King…

Though he neglects to mention what he actually means is you’ll have a first draft done and a whole lot of edit ahead of you… But in essence, that’s hard to argue with.

So this is something of a statement of intent on my part, though the intent is my own, and the statements are to myself, and it’s not 300 words a day, I tend to work towards a thousand a day, which I have mentioned before. Its time once again to get back into the habit, or good habits at least, so back to a thousand words a day or at least five hundred for now as a lot of what I am doing is editing which is always slower by necessity. Dry January is almost over, batteries are recharged and its time to get behind the keyboard set some targets and work to them. So I am doing just that, and going to make myself put writing first and stick to my targets.

If your a writer yourself, or indeed just would like to be one, I can recommend setting yourself targets and times to write. I can also recommend taking the occasional time out, as it stops you getting stale, or stops me at any rate… And I’ll sign off with one last quote, form ray Bradbury this time. One to keep in mind if you want to be a writer. One which I remind myself of whenever I have these dry spells or occasional moments of self-doubt…

And with that, I am off to start writing again, 500 or so words a day minimum…

From tomorrow …