Procrastination

So I'm writing this novel...

I'm taking a break from music as I think I mentioned in a previous blog (I can't be bothered looking it up), if I didn't mention it I know I stated that the next few months will be a "take-it-easy" approach to music, i.e. only doing stuff that interests me as and when it pops up.

Instead of doing music I'm writing the above-mentioned novel. It's a science-fiction sort of thing set in contemporary Earth and another dimension. That's all I'm saying for now.

I'd originally written nine or ten chapters and was feeling pretty pleased with myself. It amounted to about about two hundred pages and then I read an old science-fiction novel by an author I knew of but had never read anything by.

His novel and mine were the same.

Not word for word obviously but the overall plot and main points were. Bollocks. To say I was a little disheartened is an understatement and so that particular novel was abandoned. Mostly. I've kept the world I've created and the some of the characters but the rest has been jettisoned. The world I spent quite a long time creating is totally different from the world this author created so I'm happy to keep that.

So I started on a new novel and have several chapters sketched out and five actually written (will need rewriting at some point I suspect). I've added a couple of new chapters to start the book - having shuffled the order a little bit.

If I can finish it and somehow get it published I can set more novels in the same world (either Earth or the other dimension) if I feel like it. Pipe dreams - got to love them.

That's all very nice, you're probably thinking (if you are reading this) but what's that got to do with the blog title? Well, the very act of writing this blog is a form of procrastination. I'm very good at it.

I sit down and write a few pages then think "cup of tea and maybe a sandwich". So whilst munching on the sandwich I watch a YouTube video or something. Before I know it a couple of hours have flown by and I've got no further with the writing. A couple of weeks ago I managed to waste three hours watching Sapphire and Steel (I say waste ...)

People say that music helps them forget their daily woes. It's true, it does. But I do find writing does that more so. I find writing more labour intensive and the amount of concentration needed is greater. It is a more immersive experience for me. Music just flows and I follow it where ever. With writing I'm aware of the plot structure and trying not to stray to far from it although I do give myself enough flexibility to follow a good idea as long as it doesn't derail the whole.

The fun thing about writing a science-fiction novel is the world-building. Over the last year or two I've been creating languages, worlds, governments, people, history, religions and the whole gamut. The boring part is actually writing the novel. I know where I want it to go, what I want to say. The actual writing is rather mechanistic although as I mentioned above not too rigidly that I can't add things that occur to me on the hoof.

See, I'm procrastinating again.

The main problem is we only have one computer - a laptop. We use it for watching TV, listening to the radio, writing, doing music on. As a consequence I can only use it for creating music or writing when Mrs H is out. She does dialysis three nights a week so isn't back until late and this does give me time to create music or write. When she's in she wants to watch or listen to stuff, which is fine and fair enough. So really procrastination is a terrible thing and I hate that I'm prone to it. But hey ho.

It's not that I don't like writing or have no ideas. As I said above it's all laid out, mostly in my head. Need more discipline really.

So Chapter Two (the new chapter two, the original chapter two is now chapter five) sits open in the background waiting for me to actually do something to it.

Enough procrastination.

For now.