Haven’t updated in a while – my maternity leave finished at the end of April, and I’ve spent the last few weeks trying to readjust to being a productive member of society again. Needless to say, I’m knackered (and just a bit bewildered).
But that doesn’t mean I’ve stopped writing. I’m still slogging away, rewriting my novel (plus writing a few short stories), and I’ve made in interesting discovery.
Give me a pen, a notebook and a printed copy to edit, and I’ll happily sit and revise / rewrite all day. But when it comes to typing up all of these rewrites, forget it. I quite literally have 20+ pages of rewrites and edits sitting in my notebook, but for some reason, I just cannot face tying them up. It’s like the computer screen sucks out all my enjoyment and creativity.
It’s not a new phenomenon – typing stuff up is always a trial for me. I have read it’s down to typing engaging different parts of the brain than handwriting (but I could just be talking bollocks – I’m so distracted at the moment I can’t tell!), but recently it’s reached ridiculous levels.
So, in a bid to get over this, I have signed up for the Self Edit Your Novel course with The Writer’s Workshop. I’ve been a member of their community, The Word Cloud, for a few years now and have found it a useful, supportive place. I’m hoping this course will give me a bit of confidence that, contrary to popular belief, I do have a clue as to what I am doing, and maybe, just maybe, help me sort out this rewriting problem.
Although the irony that in order to participate fully and get as much out of this course as I can, I need to get those rewrites typed up is not lost on me…
Push on, dear writers! Push on! Faint heart never won fair, uh, agent. Or something like that.
adarkwhimsy 
When Chris started writing ‘The Salamander Stone’ (back in 2004) I’d type it up for her using ViaVoice. Part of the pleasure was witnessing the elaborate misunderstandings the voice-recognition software managed to produce. The technology has probably moved on since then, but if not, it’s still worth a try – for all the unintentional humour involved…
I have actually been considering buying Dragon for these very purposes – but then I do worry that what I think is wonderful stuff (mainly muttered to myself whilst I am doing the washing up) will turn out to be utter rubbish! I’ll get to it eventually… just got to work out the life / work / writing balance again.
Oh, and please tell Chris that I am reading The Salamander Stone and thoroughly enjoying it – after reading a load of self pubbed stuff that, quite frankly, should probably never have seen the light of day (or should at least have been sent to a discerning editor first), it is such a pleasure to be reading something that feels polished and exciting – much less like a self-indulgence and more like a real book.