Back to Nature by Neil McGowan

 

It’s been a funny month. I’ve been a bit of a party animal (by my standards, anyway) which on the surface should mean less time to write. I’ve also been spending more time on the garden this year, as since moving last year I now have a huge amount of space for flowers and vegetables, as well as a large expanse of lawn to keep tidy.

Yet it hasn’t worked out like that. The physical time to write has shrunk, that’s for sure. But I’ve found I’ve been using what time I do have much more productively. All those hours in the garden weeding and mowing and watering and nurturing the plants (and the rhubarb, started from seed last year, is now almost four feet tall and there’s some ready to harvest already) gives one time to think, and sub-consciously, that’s what I’ve been doing.

It’s the only way I can explain it – every night when I sit down to write, the words have flowed, minimum of 500 but often edging close to (or even over) the 1k mark. In a maximum of two hours. And the best of it is, most of it is reasonable – I mean, it’s first draft stuff, so a little scruffy around the edges but the kernel of a good story is there. I’ve taken my latest YA book from 5k words to just over 15k words in just over two weeks, and I have a clear idea of where it’s going and what needs to happen.

The other thing I credit is my renewed interest in writing short stories. I’m finding I’m more invested in the story and the characters than I have been for a couple of years, and that really shows in the writing. The protagonist feels ‘real’ to me, someone I could have a conversation with (although I suspect I’d find her exasperating).

I suppose the relaxation of the final lockdown rules has helped, to a degree as well. Not that I was ever a party animal, but, as most writers have been, I’ve been starved of the opportunity to people-watch for a few years, and all those mannerisms and snippets of speech, or ways of phrasing things,have been missing. I’d not credited just how much richness they added to my writing.

And now, my diary is positively overflowing ( for me, anyway) – recently been to a concert featuring the Beethoven triple and Brahms’s first symphony; will be out at the opera in a few days (Carmen), plus have tickets booked for Tannhauser, and Mahler’s first and fourth symphony.

My youngest rolls her eyes at this and points out she has a more active social life than I do (and she’d be right) but she’s missing the point – for me, there’s a richness to these outings for me that seems to re-energise the creative juices in me. Quality, not quantity, is my buzzword.

The other part of this is I’m taking joy in the writing process again. It feels less like an itch I have to scratch at the moment, and more like something I’m look forward to every night. I’m having fun playing with words again. Tonight, for example, I’ve written a scene that to foreshadow Glasgow being bombed with nuclear weapons. (Oh, the joy of writing fiction – have a tough day at work, you can always take it out on something with your writing…)

Tomorrow is already clear in my head, and I’ve a fair idea where the next few days will take me, as well. And long may it last