DO YOU NEED TO GET OUT MORE?

I know I do. I know this somewhere deep inside, but I forget it when I'm overwhelmed by deadlines. Because things like going for walks seem like luxuries when you're really busy. Which I am: coming up to Edinburgh Book Festival madness, with six* talks to prepare from scratch, two events to chair, an AGM to plan and chair; and I'm organising a hot-ticket party for 200 in one of the festival marquees - and yesterday I was called for jury service. For August. Oh. My. God. A breakdown looms. Or jail, if they don't let me off.

(* thought it was five but realised I'd not put one in my diary)

But all that pales into insignificance when you're trying to get a novel started. As I am. Desperately, because it would have been so great to have the first chapter written before August came and then it could mull away in my brain and I'd be ready to leap back in in September. But it's not working. The voice isn't coming. Why? Because I'm simply not ready. I haven't had enough time (or the right sort of time) to let the characters, particularly the main one whose voice it will mostly be, grow inside me and begin to talk.

Thing is - and here's my learning point for this post - you should never write until your characters are clamouring to get out of your head, till they're pestering you day and night, rattling their cage, till they start to force your hands to move over the keyboards, till, in short, they absolutely demand that their voices are heard.

In fact, Howard Nemerov said that writing was like the relationship with your bowels (stay with me): "First you can, then you can't, finally you must: only then should you reach for the paper ..."

I've talked about voice before - see here. Voice is not something you can order about. Voice has to come somewhat mysteriously, at least partially of its own accord. Sometimes it's easy, sometimes it's not. But you have to get it right and you have to nurture it very, very subtly, in a hands-off kind of way - though with utter ruthless control, too. If you don't get it right, your fabulous plot is stuffed. To be honest, in my case I don't have a fabulous plot either, but that's because for me voice comes first, plot follows; because the plot depends on the characters' actions and the characters' actions depend on their voice and the book's voice. I know, you'd think it was the other way round - but think about it, play with it, and see what happens to your relationship with your book when you do. Does it become more real?

So, what's this got to do with getting out more? In the words of my favourite film**, a lot.

I've noticed for a long time that different environments make me more or less creative. You've probably noticed the same. It's not surprising or rocket science. But there is some science behind it. This article in Sciam Mind is pretty eye-opening: it suggests that we are more creative in rooms with higher ceilings, for example. The article mentions research in which two groups of people were given a task. One group was in a room with an 8-foot ceiling and the other was in a room with a 10-foot ceiling. The second group came up with more abstract, imaginative and creative ideas.

In terms of ceilings, what greater ceiling can you have than the sky? I know that when my writing is stuck the only answer is to go for a walk, not to stay at my desk. "Environmental psychology" now explains it. And there's even a word for the tendency of people to work better when they can at least see a natural scene instead of a brick wall - biophilia. Love it! I am a biophiliac, not a drifter who keeps going outside instead of "working".

So, since I'm throughly blocked, writing-wise, I'm going to take Nemerov's advice and not reach for the paper yet. I'm going to get out, outside, out of my study, out of myself, into the biggest ceiling I know. I know from experience, and therefore have to trust, that this will work - ideas will come when I give them space. I'm going to stop trying to force this character to speak before she's ready; she must grow slowly, and one day, soon probably, she'll hit me between the eyes with her power and reality; she'll start yelling to be heard.

I just hope I'm not in the middle of doing an event when she does it. Pretty high ceilings those book festival tents have ...

Meanwhile, here's a picture of my husband (the one on the left) "standing and staring" beside a statue. The plaque in front of them is the first verse of that fab poem by William Henry Davies, titled Leisure. Obviously, I can't print it all here, or I'd be breaking the laws of copyright (by one year ...) but I think that "fair use" allows me to quote the first two lines:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

Of course, if I were to be imprisoned for not doing jury service, I may have quite a lot of time to stand and stare. Mind you, I could get a great novel written.

** Pay attention at the back: Life of Brian. Could it be any other?

And while you're still with me, and talking about getting out more, I thought I'd show you this photo of the results of my minor gardening escapade during which I created an "alittlement" some weeks ago. These are the beans growing in two pots. Jack, where are you?

And finally, after writing this blog post, I decided I would practise what I was preaching and get out. So I did, and all the way up to my favourite hill in Edinburgh I walked. Considering I live in the middle of a city and it only took me twenty minutes to walk here, I think it's pretty inspirational for a writer to have that on her doorstep. No excuses for crappy writing, I'd say. The shot at the end is Edinburgh Castle - which you need me to tell you, as you'd never guess. I suggest you play it with your sound off - it's damned windy today (which is why I am wobbling a lot).

NANOWRIMO - WHY? BECAUSE ...

I do have a habit of doing mad things. Frequently I regret it. Usually in the middle of the night. I once took a test to see whether I was a risk-taker. I scored pathetically on the type of risk which involves physical danger - like sitting by a window when at any moment a pigeon might come crashing through - but impressively bravely on "new experience-seeking".

If there was a category for "things no sane person would do but which aren't actually even a teensy bit dangerous" that would be my type of risk.

So, doing a NaNoWriMo is pretty much in that category. (A Nanothingy, btw, is where a group of idiot writers decide to write 50,000 words in a month. You're meant to do it while having a normal working life, though you will not be normal by the end of it.)

I am fascinated by several aspects but I'll share just three with you. And I'm going to be briefish because a) my posts are often too long (though none of you has been cruel enough to tell me so) and b) I've, er, got 5,000 words to write tonight.

1. Changing your writing habits is a good thing
We get into ruts. People ask writers things like "Where do you write?" or "When do you write?" and we have answers. We shouldn't have answers. Whatever your answer is now, why not change it? Our brains are wired to love change. They get excited by it, pumping out dopamine, the chemical that makes us learn, and live, and love to live and learn. This week, I've changed. I was a keyboard-addicted-email-addicted-writing-is-a-last resort-can't-write-unless-I've-vacuumed-the-dog kind of a writer, but I'm now a writer who can write With A Pen On Paper, in the garden, in a coffee shop, on a bus with yackety people around me; I'm a writer who writes first and does tasks later. This is a revelation.

2. "No Plot? No Problem!" - the book by the founder of Nanowrimo, Chris Baty - is a must-read for authors. I rarely say that anything is a must-read, but this is. If you don't find something in it that excites or challenges or improves you, I'll eat my novel. I've never read a book about how to write a novel and never wanted to, but this is a totally different book about how to write a novel - it shows you how to write your novel, not how novels are written or what to put in them. Everything from time management made sexy (que?) to how to bribe, terrify or blackmail yourself or your friends into writing is covered.

3. The important thing is to turn off your internal editor. As Baty says, "The first law of exuberant imperfection is essentially this: the quickest, easiest way to produce something beautiful and lasting is to risk making something horribly crappy." You're just supposed to write, get that first draft down, and allow it to be substandard. For me, it's hard not to re-write every sentence five times before going on to the next one. But it feels so much better to get some kind of flow and I used to be able to - I'm just getting it back, that freedom to write rubbish and deal with it later.

The way Nanowrimo works is that you all encourage each other. Or threaten, bribe, goad, jeer at or otherwise abuse each other. On Saturday, one of the participants and I were being silly on Facebook - "bet you can't" / "oh yes, I can" / "I'll raise you 5,000" / "losER" and in the end we challenged each other to write 10,000 words on Sunday. I woke up on Sunday with a migraine and she had a serious hangover (shame on you, Gillian ...) but we were both at our desks. (Yes, OK, I see this isn't sounding attractive.) And we wrote, oh boy did we write. Neither of us reached 10,000 - well, I could have, of course, but I felt sorry for her with her hangover, so I generously eased up and took another couple of codeine. But none of our several thousand words would have been written if we hadn't been doing this. Which feels pretty good.

Writing a novel is hard. Writing it with other people pushing and encouraging you is a whole lot easier. I recommend it. You don't have to wait for the official Nanowrimo to start - get a group of friends together online and just do it. Go to the website here for everything you need to start one. Or do a smaller challenge - anything to break whatever habits might be holding you back. (And you'll never know till you try.)

And even if you don't do anything vaguely Nanoesque, do remember:

• you can (and often should) change your habits or at least challenge them
• it really is worth reading this book:

Mind you, I have only done a week. In another three, I could be a wreck. I could really regret this whole post and be cursing the day Chris Baty ever decided not to be a normal person doing a normal job.

But at least I took the risk.

WRITER'S BLOCK AND AN APOLOGY

Apologies to those of you who lovely people who commented or contacted me personally to say they really liked my idea of doing online one-to-one tuition: I'm afraid it's not going to happen, or at least not in the foreseeable future. I was going to do it, really: I spent the weekend planning it, creating a new blog to give you all the info, working everything out in huge detail. The blog was all ready to go live. Just needed to click a button, though first I was going to ask lovely Jane Smith of How Publishing Really Works to say what she thought. While I was doing it, I admit that a major part of me was screaming NO! You see, although I love teaching and would have enjoyed so many aspects of this idea, I have a habit of doing too much, spending too long at my computer and not enough time getting a life, and I know that I am supposed to be writing books, doing talks, and all the other paraphernalia of being an author (including this blog, which I really enjoy doing), all of which would be enough even if I didn't have a husband, dog and occasionally two daughters. Not to mention the chocolate habit.

But I wanted to do it, and I'm an idiot, so I was ploughing on. Then, yesterday evening, my husband and I were going to the cinema, just about to leave the house, when the phone rang. It was a friend to say that a good friend of ours had died. Just like that. Out of the so-called blue.

I don't believe in signs, but I do believe in listening to yourself. And my first rational and coherent thought was a cliché: life's too short. Then another one: you only get one life. And finally a line from my favourite film, The Life of Brian: "Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it."

But life isn't a piece of shit - life's good, mostly. Life is for living and loving and so I'm going to live it and love it, and that means making time for myself, family and friends, chocolate, novels, the best words I can produce in the best order I can design. And that means no new and possibly exhausting projects like an on-line writing school, at least for now. Even though I'd have got a lot of satisfaction from it, it's not what I know I should be doing and I know this is the right decision. I hope you understand.

What I will do is include some posts about the various things I'd have taught you if you had signed up for my mad idea. This blog started as purely advice about getting published, but since the most important step towards getting published is writing the best possible book, I should and will include some advice about that, and I'll focus especially on the most common things people do wrong in their writing.

Meanwhile, I am myself learning the brutal reality of writer's block. It does feel as though something physical is sticking there, that if I tried to get back to the novel in progress today it just wouldn't work. Creativity needs space and there's no space in there right now. If I sit at my desk and stare at the screen, nothing will come and the more nothing comes the worse it feels. So, I'm going to switch the computer off and I'm going for a long walk with the dog. She won't be pleased, as it's raining and she's not stupid, but we're going. Walking and fresh air - even wet fresh air - always work for me.

Normal service and "crabbit old bat" sense of humour will be resumed. Just don't go away and please do take care.