My Big Idea Or Lack Of

It’s Sunday night and I am staring at the computer screen. For the first time in a really long time I have a spare minute to type so of course I have absolutely no idea what to write. Fascinating for you dear reader 🙂

I have been struggling even more than ever with this little thing called time and having not enough of it. My one year old wakes me up around 6am and my big boys keep me awake until around 10pm and I am just so exhausted by the end of the day I can’t bring myself to stay up later to write, and to be honest I have been feeling very blah maybe that is thanks to the tiredness so I feel like I have absolutely nothing of interest to jot down and this blog post will be proving my point!

I am coming rapidly to the end of all the available episodes of The Honest Authors podcast, I have only 23 minutes left of episode 8 in their season 6 which is all they have recorded up to date. It has been my favourite podcast ever! It has absolutely opened my eyes to a career that I really feel passionate about. Writing a novel. Writing that down scares me half to death but I feel like I need to write that down and admit it out loud. I loved writing stories when I was at school, I enjoyed creative writing in all its forms when I was a teenager but at some point I grew up and stopped writing, feeling like writing stories was embarrassing some how. If you have learned anything about me from past blog posts you will know that I am anxious and very unconfident so admitting that I would like to write a novel is hard for me to do. I have always enjoyed reading much more than watching tv or movies, and the idea of creating characters myself and bringing them to life is so exciting to me. There is only one problem at the moment with my new found career path and that is that I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what my novel is going to be about. That is quite a significant problem. Having listened to Gillian McAllister and Holly Seddon every single day for the last month I am leaning more towards ‘thriller’ but honestly not sure if I have the talent to weave together a compelling story with twists and turns that leave the reader hooked and also to cover subjects like abuse or murder is a very ambitious start. Because of my overactive anxious mind I should be able to imagine a horrendously scary concept without too much trouble, I can scare myself on the school run quite easily but getting it down on to a page seems frightening to me in itself… but then on the other hand I love reading chick lit, a nice uplifting story about love and friendships. But how to make that story interesting and stand out from all the other chick lit on the shelves?

So I am in a bit of a pickle shall we say? I am a writer who can’t write. I am a novelist trapped in the body of a non novelist and it’s really bloody annoying! I have never felt more excited about doing something but it is so depressing that I do not know how to start. Some of the authors say on the Honest Authors podcast that they start writing without knowing where the story is leading but can that even be true? Surely they know the genre before they start. There are so many silmilarities with my personality type and other authors I have listened to, such as the over thinking, the anxiety, the introvert, the love of reading, so to be an actual writer I just need to start writing and then it comes back to that age old problem of not having enough time as it always does. Maybe I will write a book one day maybe if it is something I do truly want I will find the time but it won’t be today as now I am off to bed and no closer to starting that novel.

Send help!… and story ideas please 🙂

Thanks for reading my ramblings.

NJ x