Finishing fears

I am two book reviews short for April and May but if I leave updating the blog until I have scanned the covers and written the reviews, then I fear it will get very dusty around here, and that is no good as I now have 150 lovely folk who have chosen to make my day and click the ‘follow’ button! Woohoo - welcome, friends! The tea is poured and Twirl chocolate bars are on me, in a non-kinky way, you understand. And while there is a happy rustle of wrappers, I shall make a mental note to add the two missing book reviews to June’s book worm post (which will probably make an appearance on this blog in August). Time management, you see. I am having a problem with it of late.

My blog post of a couple of weeks ago was full of joy that I had managed to finish the majority of redrafting and was now on the grand read through, but since then the world has clicked on a few gears and suddenly I have been racing along trying to keep up. Those metaphorical plates have been spinning (and crashing) recently, leaving me feeling rather wrecked. Of course it could have been to do with the free bar at a recent party... All I am saying about that night is being woken by the guard on the last tube home is never a good look. Oh dear. Hic.

It has felt harder recently to click my head into writing mode. I think this is down to the closer I come to the end, the harder I feel it is to let go. This story has been a long term project for me (five years so far) and I guess, silly though it sounds, I am loathe to send it away to seek its fortune. Actually is loathe the right word? Terrified, perhaps? I know potential rejection of the story is not potential rejection of me as a person, but it feels very hard to separate at times.

I have to get my head over this stage and embrace the next – how do you feel towards the end of a project / short story / novel? Are there any techniques you adopt to get over this bit? I do try and focus on the positives and am deep down excited to finish, but also am annoyingly reluctant!

Why can’t I just be happy?

It’s a beautiful winter’s day outside the window. I watch the dog-walkers use the small alley cut-through to the park, and let their dogs off the lead a safe distance within to gambol joyfully in the pale sunshine. The nearby junior school lies deserted, its playground empty, the primary-coloured climbing frame shiny and solitary in the sun. A cat slinks belly-low along a neighbour’s fence, and two sparrows flap startled into the air from the bare branches of a tree.

I watch it all from behind clear glass, the central heating cushioning me from the pale sun and the cool breeze. I want to go outside but I have nowhere to go, not really, not at this time of day. This time of day is for shoppers, children with pocket money, people on a mission, people in a hurry. I have no mission, no hurry. I am nothing much.

I stare ahead, but am not really seeing anymore. My mind is where it always rests, back with the novel. My thoughts whir and skitter between paragraphs, while the words ‘get a job’ bubble up from the depths like noxious gases. Everything collides and is simultaneous – my characters, my finances, my future, my story, my fears, my dreams. Underpinning everything is the hum from the hoover being worked downstairs, and the radio set to old-time classics. My mum sings, and I enjoy her happiness, even as I feel stuck in time, and somewhere out there is another me on a mission in a hurry.

I wonder what she looks like, this other me. Taller, somehow. Graceful. She looks like she is someone as she goes about her day, a real person, not a shadow. She has nice hair. I wonder if I will ever be that girl. The way to being her is through this story, I think. So here I sit, and turn away from the pale sunshine. It’s not for me today.