Keep on keeping on

Keep on keeping on …

So we’re heading into the third week of SocNoc.  For me (and probably for most of us), it’s been a full-on couple of weeks, yet that 50,000 word winning post still seems a fair way ahead over the distant horizon.  It’s that time when you need to get your head down and, in the words of Bob Dylan, keep on keeping on.

That’s been my approach so far this SocNoc.  I’ve been trying to notch up a steady word count on a daily basis.  Not least because I’m trying not to overtax my hands, which started playing up on day one of SocNoc (yes, day one, when they had been fine for months!).  And others have stressed the value of writing something every day, even if it’s only a few hundred words.

It’s worked well for me so far, although for the last few days, I’ve not written anything at all.  I’m tired, and I needed a break.  And now the football world cup has started, which is proving to be a major distraction.

But another thought that perks me up, when I’m not humming along to Bob Dylan songs, is that I’m in a far better place than I was this time last year.  When I started my first SocNoc last year, I’d not been writing much at all, and the stuff I had been writing didn’t really seem to be working.  I decided to use SocNoc to finish a draft of a novel that I’d started when I was doing a two year creative writing course.  I’d already put a lot of work into it, with five reasonably polished chapters written and a lot of research and planning.  I got stuck in and after ten days of SocNoc, I realised that the novel didn’t work.  It was lopsided.  The tension and the interest were in different places.  And actually, I just wasn’t that bothered about it any more.  This escalated into a full blown crisis of confidence.  I put down my pen for at least a week and even contemplated giving up writing altogether.

But there was something about the challenge element of SocNoc.  I’d signed up for it, and I couldn’t give up, just like that.  So I decided to sit back down again, carry on with my novel, write through my crisis and see what came out of it.  Because I no longer had any expectations for my novel, I was able to silence my very vocal inner critic, and immerse myself in the world of my story, letting my characters take me where they wanted to go.  I thoroughly enjoyed it.  At the end, I killed off most of them and even cried when I did it because I had lived with them for so long.  The novel is well and truly abandoned now, but SocNoc got me writing again.  I suddenly started getting ideas and as soon as SocNoc was over, I began writing short stories again and I’ve been writing steadily ever since.

What I particularly like about that line ‘keep on keeping on’ (it’s from ‘Tangled up in Blue’, if you don’t know the song), is that it’s about keeping going when everything is going pear-shaped.  He’s keeping going because he doesn’t know what else to do.  So even if it does all start to turn to custard, and I hope it doesn’t for any of you, just keep going and see what comes out, let go of your expectations and do it for fun.  At some point you will look up and there it will be, gleaming white in the sun, that magical winning post with ‘50,000 words’ inscribed on it, just at the top of the next hill.