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In the Writing Room Today

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I'm not a full-time writer, so during the week my work has to take priority. And there are times I find that a complete shame, with ideas trying so hard to escape onto the page. My writing room turns into an office (at least, during this lockdown period it does - usually I spend a lot of time on the road) with the work laptop open and the work phone pinned to my ear for big chunks of the day.

That means nothing gets written for my novel between the hours of 8am and 6pm. Some days I'm then too tired to get any more ideas out of my head, having spent the day thinking, listening and writing for work. Often I will write early in the morning or later at night, but Scouse Lad has been ill (yes, he's had the lurgy) so I'm doing more around the house than usual. That means I'll be squeezing writing time in for another week.

These are the days I have to be kind to myself, though. I set realistic targets for work days - 500-1,000 words - and if I don't hit that target, well, there's always tomorrow. There's few weeks where I don't get the chance to catch up.

The most important thing, though, if you are a writer who works a job to pay the bills, it's ok to take longer to write than people who work full-time at this. And it's ok to be kind to yourself about only managing to write at weekends and on holidays.

So this week I'm looking forward to Friday, and the unusual Bank Holiday Monday at the end of the week (it feels nuts - but it was arranged so we could celebrate VE Day 75 years on before anyone knew we'd be in lockdown and celebrating nothing more than surviving these strange times.

Thursday evening I am going to shut off my work laptop and phone, hide them away, and spend the next few days writing. My aim will be to write 3,000 words a day. If I manage that I should be at around the 60,000 words stage. And that means I'll only have about 20,000 or so words to go.

Keep your fingers crossed for me that I can focus myself to get there. I want this manuscript to be finished by the end of June so that I can edit it in July and start submitting to agents in August and September. This will be the first time I've managed to get this far, so I'll need you rooting for me!

What are your plans for the bank holiday weekend? Are you going to give yourself permission to write?
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