Time is all we had, but, as Take That happily remind me, it was never ours to keep.
This week time was never mine to begin with. I have had NO TIME. And by no time I mean no time to write.
But as I sat down today to write for the first time in ages (HOORAY!!!) I realised that actually I am a lot better off for taking a break, however enforced. My eyes are lovely and fresh and I can see sooo many mistakes and areas for improvement that I could not see before and, even better, and I can see very clearly how to right those cheeky little wrongs.
You see, I hit a tricky patch in my current rewrite. For the past three months I have been pouring over the first half of my book examining sentences, structure, areas of missed dramatic potential, etc. The words SHOW NOT TELL have been on repeat in the back of my mind. About two weeks ago, finally happy(ish) with the first half I decided to bravely delve into the second half of my novel and begin rewriting that.
Queue total self confidence meltdown.
I read it. I re-read it. I cried. I read it again and thought oh jesus everything I ever wrote of any value is all in the first half and the second half is bad scrambled egg.
And then this week happened. Ill children, first week of school, subsequent bedtime/sleeping issues and then an ill me all meant that I spent a total of forty minutes writing when I would normally aim for fifteen to twenty hours.
But I am no longer grumpy! Because guess what? A week off made me finally realise that, three months ago, the first half of my novel was just as horrific as my second half and I didn’t cry then, I just worked bloody hard (with a lot of guidance from the fab Simon Hall) until it got better.
So what do I have to do to get the second half up to scratch? I have to work bloody hard. And that, my friends, makes me very happy.
Time can help you find the ground and knock you off your feet. Oh Take That, where would I be without you?
Rebecca Tinnelly 