It seems like a long time since I crowed about completing #100daysofwriting, it feels like a long time since I threw my hat in the ring and said, I would do more writing and that I would commit to #ayearofwriting. For those of you reading this and saying, ‘Well, isn’t that what writers are supposed to do?’ You are wrong. We all have off days, we all go to work and seem to sit there achieving nothing, thinking nothing, doing nothing but we all try to look busy. Writing can be like that sometimes. You sit down, you do nothing, you write nothing and when family pass you look busy. So, why is #ayearofwriting different from just doing the job? It liberates me.
It gives me an excuse to say no to meetings that go nowhere, to readings that can often be draining, counter productive and downright useless. I have nothing to sell at the moment, so why do a reading? Readings are there basically to sell books but if you are too busy doing readings, you don’t write books. You sit in your office looking busy because you are drained. This means it becomes an awful circle or promotion over content, and the writing suffers. It fills me with immense satisfaction to be able to say, ‘Sorry, I can’t do [INSERT WHATEVER IT IS HERE] because I am busy with a project’. That gets people excited, give it the hashtag #ayearofwriting and people crow at me, ‘That’s a big commitment’, ‘Everyday?!’ and my favourite, ‘But will it get published?’ This is about the act of writing, of flexing my writing voice, of climbing to the top of a tall building and telling the world that I have my own rules. Rule #1: Write. Rule #2: Be a writer, and; Rule #3: Put one word after another. I could add, don’t look back, write through that draft but each writer is different and those three rules really sum it up. So, save the image below, post it in front of where you work, take no prisoners, make no excuses, obey the rules.
Andrew Oldham's Boneyard 