You may have noticed this—if you’ve been paying attention closely, or at all—but over the last few years I’ve fallen out of the writing habit. I offer no excuses for this, although the reasons are numerous and the same as I’ve offered multiple times in the past.
The long and short of it is that LIFE gets in the way. All aspects of life. Family time. The Job. Playtime (I very much blame Rockstar and Red Dead Redemption II for this). And, if I’m honest, just all-out laziness.
2015—5 years ago now—was the last time I was particularly active as a writer, both from the actual writing point of view and a promotional one. My last book was published in June of that year, for example.
Since then I’ve made several attempts to kick-start the habit—mainly through starting off the blog again. But things get in the way of that too. I currently have three WordPress installs on my website server, one for the “author” information, one which is supposed to be a bit more personal and one which is supposed to be more of a political/cultural commentary one.
The problem, to some extent, is that the cultural/political climate over the last five years has become utterly, utterly toxic, and I’ve not wanted to ‘tarnish’ the “Marc Nobbs” brand, so to speak, but getting involved in it.
That was probably both a mistake and not a mistake. I’ve had a lot to say over the last five years, but much of it would have come across as angry and might well have alienated a few people. Oddly, though, I’ve been pretty active on Twitter and Facebook during this period, although, I’ve done that using my real identity rather than my writer’s one. Again, I didn’t want to alienate anyone.
But I do still enjoy writing. Once I force myself to sit down and start doing it, I really do enjoy it.
It’s that ‘forcing yourself to sit down and do it’ bit that’s the issue.
Good writers have good writing habits. My writing habits have all but disappeared in the last 5 years. I need to find some way to reform them.
To that end, I’ve bought myself a Journal. An actual, paper and pen, journal. I did this last week. Last Friday in fact. I even bought a new pen to write in it with.
What prompted this was, it was my little girl’s 8th Birthday and she had asked for a ‘diary’. I think she’s that sort of age. So, while getting hers, I got one for me, too. Only, I’m not an eight-year-old girl, so mine is a ‘journal’ not a ‘diary’.
The idea is that, but forcing myself to write in it each day (or to at least write an entry for each day, even it’s not written on that actual day) it’ll help me to form good writing habits again.
How hard can that be?
As I’ve proven over the last 5 years, Very. Very hard indeed.
So, let’s start with my private journal and we’ll see how it goes, shall we?
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