Writing without looking back

(It's a metaphor for life, dur.)

This month I’ve started writing my latest book. I feel like a bit of a tit writing 'my latest book', as though I have written 37 already and this is the latest instalment in a decades long saga. It is not. It is in fact my third book which, given how inherently lazy I am, is three more books than I ever thought I’d be bothered to write.

It turns out that all I really need is a deadline. I'm not actually lazy, I just lack motivation unless there is the prospect of getting TOLD OFF. Heaven forbid we ever have a repeat of that French lesson one morning in 1991 where I got confused about the homework deadline, didn't do mine in time and cried in front of the whole class.

(Case in point, I'm only writing this post because my good friend Gill Sims wrote a post this week and I felt like I'd be letting the side down if I didn't keep up.)

Suffice to say that when the pressure is on I can write quickly, which I think we can all agree is all that anybody looks for in a book. 'A Times bestseller you say? Five stars reviews across the board? Hmmm... I'm not sure, can we find out how long it took them to write it?'

(Stay with me. There's a moral.)

This month then I've been writing and writing FAST.

This has been partly due to a teeny misunderstanding about my deadline, which I thought was the END of March and which turned out to be the BEGINNING of March. My editor was very nice about it and was happy to go with the end, but my inner swot thought 'fuck it,* let's go for it'. I only discovered my mistake a couple of weeks ago, having starting writing on January 1st, but I'm past 56,000 words and feeling confident.

(Oh crap, I just realised that I must have written this as a beg for praise. God I'm so pathetic. Ah well, might as well go with it now, given the title.)

So how am I writing so quickly?

Easy.

DO NOT LOOK BACK.

If you start reading back over what you've just written you will be forever reworking and rewriting and forget what you were trying to say in the first place. Instead I just tune into the story in my head, watch it play out like an episode of Death in Paradise and write it down. You can't afford to stop or you will miss something someone is saying.

This approach is very similar to the approach I take to life and has always stood me in good stead. Or passable stead, depending on the angle and the lighting. (Best viewed by candle.) Stopping to worry about what you might have just said or what you could have done better is futile as, unlike writing, you physically can’t go back and change it. There is literally no point in looking back. It’s gone, and you’re working to a deadline right?

The moral? Enjoy the story you’re writing, whether it’s your own or a murder mystery about a hapless mum of two who finds Father Christmas dead in her larder on Christmas Eve. Hypothetically.

In life you only get the first draft.

…

P.S. I wanted that to sound profound but I think it came out as wanky.

P.P.S. I was going to extend the metaphor to include the fact that writers always say the first draft is always a bit shit but that didn’t feel very inspiring so pretend I didn’t say that.

P.P.P.S I wrote that in eight minutes.

*Not that obviously as my inner swot doesn't swear.