Back to the Book

Sometimes I am trying to write a novel, and sometimes I am not. Recently I hadn't been, in part because I had been discouraged by the similarity of part of my plan for this yet to be named novel and a significant part of a book that I read recently. That book, the 13 and a half lives of captain bluebear, had at least about a hundred pages about the title character working as essentially a stand-up comedian and I planned for a good portion of my book to be about a supernatural semi-mythical character pursuing stand-up comedy, and now I still plan to do so. Apart from the already stated similarities, the two story threads should be very different and making them so seems like a very attainable task.

Now that I'm writing again, the key is to actually write. I read a book called The War of Art a month or so ago which emphasized the importance of attatching utmost importance to whatever goal that one chooses to pursue if one wants to be truly successful. That's easier to do with plenty of money to pay the rent with while working on something guaranteed to bring in zero financial reward for the forseeable future, but the book never said it would be easy - it's a sort of personal war and war is never easy. I'm certainly not supposed to be using my energy on several different writing pursuits, but I can't see myself refusing to write what I feel like writing just because I'm just supposed to write one thing at once. If I'm blocked in one area then at least I should work on something else and then I might get distracted from the second thing by thoughts of the first thing. And vice versa. Until eventually, after a long time, I get both things done. Hopefully without using the word "things" quite so often.

Yesterday I wrote two paragraphs of the book. That's two more than I had written in quite a while. I don't know how much of those two paragraphs will stick in the finished product if there ever is a finished product, but the answer is almost certainly more than if I had written nothing at all.