I wish I was an always-writer, but I’m very much a sometimes-writer. I listen to podcasts, such as So you want to be a writer with Valerie Khoo and Allison Tait. I also enjoyed Your Creative Life with Vanessa Carnevale and Kimberley Foster, but they are not producing more episodes. I have listened to The Joined Up recently.
The hosts and many of their guests talk about how many words they write a day, and I understand from Anna Spargo-Ryan’s tweet today that she’s making some progress too. She has reached 50 000 out of a goal of 80 000 words, which is 10 000 more than she had 10 days ago. That’s not bad at all, but I suspect that’s how it is having the skills, or talent.
My way of working has always been problematic. I always got into difficulties in school because the teacher wanted me to start with a disposition that I had to stick to. I suppose that was to make sure that I didn’t go astray, which was definitely a possibility in my case. I have a tendency to take long detours into irrelevant topics. The problem with me is that I start writing and I never know where I’m going. I’m like a guy I saw on Grand Design with Kevin McCloud once. A man in Wales was building a house in a Japanese style, but he wasn’t exactly accurate with measurements and drawings. Whenever something was wrong, he adjusted something else to fit, and amazingly enough he made it work.
This is partly why my story is taking forever to finish. I had an idea for a start and things went smoothly for a while, but now I am getting into trouble. I’m not sure about how things should develop, and sometimes I discover that something else should have happened first, because it looked like a piece of the story was missing. I’m at one of those “oops! How did I end up here-stages” now. So I have to think long and hard, because as I’m a sometimes-writer nothing comes to me quickly.
I am not good at focusing at all. We live in a small apartment and being alone is a luxury I usually don’t have. If someone just talks to me or asks me a question I find it hard, often impossible to resume work. There are days when I don’t produce anything, and even on a very good day I usually don’t write more than 300 words. The 25 000 words I have at the moment have taken some time. I guess it’s in keeping with my style that I have worked out some things that I want to save for the second book.
This is irritating because I want to finish now, but I guess this is who I am. My story will take the time it will take, and I believe my words will reach the publisher when they are ready to be released. I’m not only a here and there-writer. I frequently feel like an accidental writer as well. I will be if I get published because it will be unexpected. Structure never was my strong side, and in school I frequently knew more about a topic than I could prove. Getting the words from my head to the paper was challenging, and I suspect that I have the right ideas about my book as well. It’s just a matter of getting it out, which is why 2000 words a day would never work for me.
Incidentally, Tetris is on of my favourite computer games, and it’s an arena where I may actually be able to compete against J. K. Rowling. This is one of her tweets from today:
I’m a bigger fan of board games these days, so I’m more inclined to be playing Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle (a cooperative deck-building game) or the Harry Potter version of Munchkin that is reported to be released in October.
John's garret 
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