Hmm, you see that word counter on the right? Some of you might also notice that the amount I’ve written doesn’t seem to have changed very much and that the total I’m aiming for has gone down a bit too. Now let me say straightaway that any comments such as ‘What’s changed’ or ‘What have you been doing all this time?’ will go straight into that little bin symbol! There has been much wrestling behind the scenes and plenty of gnashing of teeth. Rewriting ‘Fighting the Tide’ has proved to be another steep learning curve; you don’t have the intense thrill of the first draft to entice you on and you have all of the self-doubt and inner critic to hold you back. The only way forward, as I’ve belatedly discovered, is to write through it. Yep, you apply your bum to the seat, you open your laptop and you write . You write even when the inner critic is telling you, ‘That’s pants, that is!’ because, hey, some of what you’ve written might not be pants – how do you know until you’ve written it? I ...
Christine Stovell, author and freelance writer, on living and writing in West Wales