…or so my son told me this morning, proudly quoting the motto from his Aesop’s Fables book. It’s just popped back into my head as I worry over only managing 500-odd words this morning (exact figure anyone’s guess, Ywriter isn’t playing nicely). I thought about it, and I seem to remember having times like this when writing TSC – there were even weeks when I got absolutely nothing at all done.
It’s not that I have writer’s block or any such well-known but widely-debated phenomenon. I know where my plot is going (albeit a rather skeletal-looking plot at the moment). It’s more like a kind of stage-fright. I’m about to write some very important parts of the storyline, and I’m sitting with fingers poised over the keyboard thinking, I’m really not sure I can do this. It needs to be done properly. It needs to be feasible. There must not be any holes in said plot. The characters need to act in a way that makes the reader either love them or hate them, or at least sit on the fence and think about them.
It’s a big responsibility, even more so now I’m writing the sequel to a book that, so far, has received some very good reviews. I have people who expect the sequel to bring them just as much enjoyment as TSC, and rightly so. There’s nothing like a bit of added pressure to make you sweat as you sit at the desk with a blank screen in front of you!
But as old Aesop pointed out, slow and steady can get you to the finish line. I’m not racing against anyone except my own expectations. It doesn’t matter how many slow days I have. Or even off days. As long as it gets done, and is of the quality people expect, then all is well in my little writing world.
graveyardmuse 