Novel writing course … and Morocco

I joined a nine-week novel writing course today. It begins next Monday. I want to get this damn book written⁠—the one that’s been rolling around my head like a lost pinball for a decade. That’s all I want. Just one book written. No matter the outcome. It’s not too much to ask for from these lazy damn bones, is it?

I’ve devoted much of my ‘studying’ life to writing—an undergraduate degree in creative writing; a postgraduate degree in writing, editing and publishing; countless weekend courses; one six-month long novel writing course (where I think I wrote about 400 words in total)—and here I am again, handing over my credit card in the hope that this one will propel me towards completion. Or at least half-letion. I know that I just have to get the story down (the story that I think it is now, not the one I’m sure it will become) . The editing, the pulling-apart and putting-back-together again will be like having a wine at sunset sitting on the deck of your favourite seaside pub (bloody easy). I like figuring the problems out once I can see the story’s full potential down on paper. It’s like a puzzle where some of the pieces don’t quite fit or, more often than not, are incompletely the wrong shape, and I have to figure out how to re-shape them or bin them and start again with the knowledge of what won’t work to create the piece of art these words will become. And by ‘art’, I’m not talking myself up. Anything that comes out of the imagination of a human being is art. That means the first car was a work of art. The first shuttle into space. The first pair of shoes. The first eating utensil. The first poem. The first drawing. And then all the ones that came afterwards. We’re all artists, whether we think of ourselves that way or not, because we’re human.

And I’ve decided to join the human race. Follow me over the next nine weeks, as I write the first 20,000 words of my novel.

p.s. here are a couple of photos of Morocco, which I visited recently with my sisters. Best. Holiday. Ever. Beautiful country. Hospitable people. Awesome fun with sisters.