I'm now old news

I am heartbroken. No, truly. I know I'm quite prone to be overly dramatic but this time it's serious. Allow me to explain from the beginning.

The only writing competition I ever came first in (yes, meaning that I WON!) was for the exam board AQA back in 2011. The theme was 'identity' so you either had to write about your identity or make one up to write about. I made one up.

The story of how I won is actually quite mysterious. So much was down to chance. I wrote the piece last minute and didn't give myself time to proof-read anything. Then on our last day of school, I forgot to hand it in to my English teacher and only remembered about an hour later, when I was shopping with my friend. I made her go all the way back with me in the hope our teacher was still there - she was.

Already my prospects didn't look good.

I had to find a computer and print off the pages to be posted to AQA and I worried the printer wouldn't work. It did, though. Relieved, I said goodbye to my teacher and went about my day. Then it was the two week Easter holiday.

Two days later, my teacher still hadn't posted my entry and she was leaving the country to enjoy her time off. While very lovable, she is also extremely forgetful. If I had known at the time that she hadn't posted it yet, I probably would have been in a permanent state of anxiety. My teacher later confessed that she posted my entry on her way to the airport!

Feeling tense?

Recently, I've been having a problem with sticking to one tense when I write. For example, I'll begin in first person, using the past tense and after a few pages - suddenly it's in the present continuous tense.

I know sometimes a change in tense can signal something, such as a change in pace of the story or something significant like that, but in my case it just seems random. I'm not doing it on purpose (at least, not consciously...). So what's up, brain?

Another problem I have is that sometimes, when I'm writing a scene or a chapter it will take me AGES to write it. I could have written five paragraphs after two months - if that. But really, if it takes me a while to write it, I know by now that it's a signal that it's not working. It's like insisting I stay in my seat, even though the plane is on fire and everyone else is leaving via the emergency exit.

I just refuse to accept that it's failing and keep trying to write. Until of course, I come to my senses and scrap it all, starting afresh and realising: hey, this is working out a lot better! I can write again, hallelujah!

Maybe one day I'll learn to catch the signs of a chapter not working sooner, and avoid feeling like I've wasted valuable time.

Memory lane

Erm (yeah, always a great way to start a sentence) I didn't really know what to write about this week so I decided to put up a story I wrote in school when I was twelve. We were learning about gothic fiction and had to write our own stories.

It's just a shame that this was never marked. The red pen corrections were done by me, as homework. I think I even finished the story as homework that I gave myself, because I'm sure no-one else in my class finished their story. It wasn't given a title back then and I don't feel as connected to my twelve year old self to presume to know what it would have been, so I'm leaving it untitled. I hope you can read my handwriting.

All writers are mad

It's a fact, it really is. It must be. How could it not be true? We sit around, thinking about horrible things to happen to fictional characters, and then we write it down as if it actually happened. We're forever talking about character 'voices', but they're just the voices in our own heads. We can make up believable cities, countries, planets - even universes!

Anyone who claims to be a writer has an eccentric personality when it boils down to it. Jacqueline Wilson? Ring obsession. Patrick Rothfuss? CHOSE to do nine years of university. Derek Landy? Wanted to kill Tanith Low in the first book.

You see where I'm going with this. All writers are a bit nuts, otherwise they wouldn't write. It's the normal people who read the books and live the adventures vicariously. Us writers? We have our hallucinations imaginations to give us entertainment and couldn't ask for more than that. Personally, I would love to live inside my own head! Writers turn to writing because otherwise, we'd just be wandering around the world, muttering fragmented scenes that are stuck in our heads, desperately trying to find a way to get out...

Yeah. All writers are mad.

That sums it up pretty well, actually.