I've been thinking that before the end of this year I need to have a proper sort out of all my writing things. In my room there is this stack of notebooks, folders and loose pieces of paper which all seem to have amassed and landed into this limbo land which I need to somehow organise.
My Nana always used to say that you should start a New Year as you mean to go on. If you have an untidy house on the 1st of January then it will be untidy for the rest of the year. This has always been true - but I think that's because in essence we are relatively untidy people so it was never miraculously going to transform itself into a tidy house just because one day of the year we blitzed the whole thing.
However, I am willing to adopt this theory when it comes to my writing. I'm going to organise my bits of paper; I'm going to sort out my notebooks and I'm going to properly file my computer documents so that I know where to find them. By the 31st of this December I'm going to have the neatest writing nest that the world has ever seen. I'm going to be so impressively organised that people are literally going to faint with shock when they see my writing space! Alright, well maybe they'll faint with shock for a few days and then no doubt it will return to normal.
See I like chaos. Chaos helps me write. I like chaotic characters and complete and utter madness. I need a huge plethora of ideas that swirl around and around until somehow - magically - a story starts to form in the middle of them and then a miracle happens and an actual plot appears. That's how I write - the age old blain splurge phenomena.
Don't get me wrong! I have a lot of respect for organised writers who plot plan, polish every word until it shines like a little gem. I wish, in some ways, that I could be precise and like the Mary Poppins of writers, but I'm not, I'm more like the Indiana Jones of writers who flies by the seat of their pants and rescues a story from the jaws of madness.
But one thing is definitely for certain - whatever kind of writer you are - adopted from my beloved Strictly Come Dancing - KEEP WRITING!
