The Sound Of Deadlines As They Woosh By

So, I failed. Utterly. I had meant to complete at least 500 words for the short stories I'm working on at the moment, particularly as I'd missed my vague daily target of 1,000 on the previous two days. But, no luck: 500 might not seem a great deal, but the trick is to have them make some sort of coherent sense. Now, you may think that such concerns about coherence haven't previously constrained me before (such as in the writing of these blogs, for instance), but I feel compelled to make the occasional effort.

However, at the end of last night, I couldn't even manage the 500, ironically because I'd been entering that day's blog entry. Ironic because one of the main purposes in my keeping up to date with the blog is to ensure that I don't get too rusty with the writing. But I've decided not to feel too guilty about missing last nights writing session (although if the same happens tonight, then we have a problem). If I was going to beat myself up about the fact that I'd missed a night's writing (alright, three) then it would be very easy to get despondent, and go three weeks without bothering to flip open the pc. Better to keep the momentum going, even if you stray from the path for a couple of days. I imagine it's a bit like attitudes to giving up smoking. Now, I myself have never smoked, so I've never had to go through the whole trial of giving up, or trying to, but it seems to be that the problem is all contained within those two words, 'giving up'. There's not much wriggle room there; you're either a smoker, or you're not. You either still smoke, or you've managed to give up. So, when someone who is trying to give up has a faltering moment, and has 'just one' cigarette, then it's too easy to think that they've dropped from having 'given up', back to being a smoker. I've often thought that instead of 'giving up', we should try the phrase 'pausing'. Everyone's allowed to pause. And it means there 's no pressure: if you successfully 'pause' smoking for a good long while - say, three years - and you happen to take a puff of someone else's fag on new years eve, then no-one can judge you, it's not like you've fallen off the wagon; it's not like you now give up giving up, and go back to smoking 20 a day.

All of which is a tortuous way of saying that, despite the fact that I haven't written a great deal over the past couple of days, I'm not going to panic about it too much. Although, to be fair, you can only go so long, not writing, and still call yourself a writer. But I'd rather not get back into the groove of going too long without writing again. Too easy to let things go fallow, let the ideas wither into dull nothingness.

There are things to get in the way, however: there's another rehearsal for Three Kinds Of Me tonight, and both Thursday and Friday are taken up with Ghostwalks, which are beginning to have a different feel to them as the nights get darker.