An Honest Day’s Work

& my no-word-count writing challenge

In order to persevere, sometimes all I need to know is that my funny little ways and strange feelings about writing are “normal” in the sense that other writers, with whom I identify, behave and feel the same way. There are days when recognition is all I need to keep going.

So in the spirit of mutual reassurance I’m going to tell you about a “normal” writing day.

When I say “normal” I don’t mean that the particular writing day I’ve diarised for you was without regret, or that I think this is the most common kind of writing day. But by being honest about how writing days sometimes go, even when you intend them to be quite different, we can understand ourselves, tweak our process or reset our intentions. We may do this many times over the course of writing a novel in order to come back to the desk again, and again, and again.

But first a borrowed quote that gave me a lift today. This should serve any of you who struggle to come back to the desk because you believe that what you’re writing…