CONTAIN THIS HOUR

The holidays are drawing to a close, and already the evenings are setting chilly.

As the summer draws to its inevitably conclusion, t’o-m has observed “you’re about to start writing again, aren’t you?”.

How well he knows me.

Yes, the signs are unmistakeable. I am absent-minded (even more so than usual), grumpy, unable to settle to anything, frittering time away on procrastinatory jobs.

The time has come to face facts: the pre-planning is done, the outlining is done. I’ve read as much background and research data as I need to, and I’ve drilled several old ladies on their wartime experience.

I am all set and ready to go on CONTAIN THIS HOUR, but, as always, standing on the precipice is a pretty daunting prospect – nothing but a freefall of some 50,000 words before me, and little in the way of safety net, parachute or bungee line to anchor me.  It’s the same every time: I want to write the story – it’s been eating away at me for months, and it was a couple of years ago that the idea latched itself on to me. I *need* to write the story – it’s a departure from fantasy, but it’s a departure I want to make, an opportunity to explore a different landscape, to work on a smaller scale, to use different techniques to express the conflicts and resolutions that interconnect this group of stories.

So what’s holding me back?

Nothing, in the physical sense, but there’s always the fear: the fear that the reality of the novella will not live up to the ethereal creation balanced in my head, that something will be lost in the clumsy transmutation from glimmering mind-jewel to corporeal creation, that I am simply not capable of producing the work that I want to generate here and now.

Of course, to expect to produce a perfect first draft is insane, and I know that I will need to polish whatever I produce to bring it up the sheen I see in my mind, but still ….. the fear remains.

The only way to conquer that fear is to face it squarely and to start the work, to do it, and when it’s there I shall see if I’ve spawned an angel or a monster.

So. The goal this week: to write a scene per night, and complete two of the stories this week.

Wish me luck?