Wednesday 4 August 2010

Housework is good. Let's hear it for boredom.

You get stuck.  You sit and stare at the screen.  You play spider solitaire until your wrist threatens repetitive strain injury.  You make coffee. You make toast.  You do housework. I cleaned the kitchen, the toilet, the stairs, the landing, the front room and then I got out the hoover and I got it.  Suddenly, from nowhere, I got it, everything I needed came in a big rush as I watched the dog hairs from under the chest whirl round and round in the cleaner. 
Everytime I get stuck the idea always comes when I'm doing something so boring that I can't even be bothered to think.
Got the go ahead on an idea at the end of last week.  Some juggling needed as I have three commissions on the go. This one needs a first draft by next march so plenty of time to think. And research.  I was listening to Front Row in the Harrogate Crime Writing festival and one writer said that you only use about 10% of any research.  I'm not sure as much as that surfaces in the final piece.  You absorb all this stuff, try to forget it, and start writing. And what you hope is that little details will pop up when you need them to give the world you're creating its authenticity.  That happened too this week shortly after my breakthrough moment with the hoover.  I had requested a document when I went to the Natural History Museum for the Buckland research only to find it wasn't what I expected and forget all about it. And then, there it is, nudging it's way up to the surface wanting to be used.
It's a bloody mysterious business, writing.  Nothing to do with waiting for inspiration and all to do with hard graft, but two things I do know.  When I don't feel like writing and have to force myself to sit down and start I often do my best work, and when I can't think of what I have to do next, the solution comes as soon as I stop thinking.

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