How Many Times do I Have to Say This?

My advice to would be writers: start blogging.

Why? Because blogging once a week helps instill the discipline necessary to becoming a writer. It forces you to actually publish your work rather endlessly revising it. If you’re lucky somebody might even read what you’ve written: treat that as a bonus.

I’ve given this advice many times: it’s rarely acted upon.

Even by myself.

My writing juddered to a halt around 2018. Family circumstances slowed me down, then Covid finished me off. Spending up to fourteen hours a day at a computer in my day job as teacher meant I had no wish to sit down afterwards and write. The ideas kept coming thick and fast, I’d just lost the urge to knit them together.

And then last year I finally followed my own advice. The discipline of posting here once a week has been enough for me to start writing properly again. I’m now 60K into a novel (that’s probably about a third of the way, see here for why) and I’m working on short stories again.

Thank you to all those who’ve given feedback here. Your encouragement has kept me blogging which has got me writing again.