Hello, again

I’m back.

I confess that none of my new blog posts got lost in the world wide bandwidth fest that is the web and no one deleted them by accident.  Truth is, none of the words I had earmarked to write, actually made it onto my website. 

Most are reserved for my current novel or rather, the editing thereof – chapter after sometimes-acceptable chapter, fixing little (and big) mistakes as I go.  Have I ever mentioned how straightforward writing the first draft of a novel is compared to morphing it into a final draft?   

As mentioned, I haven’t posted anything in quite some time.  But you can be sure that while I was absent, I was scrutinising every sentence of my manuscript and becoming increasingly frustrated that I can’t progress my next novel until I’ve finished the current one.

I did do other things too, of course.  The most recent non-event that comes to mind is that this week, I entered a lottery syndicate at work.  We didn’t win, not this time anyway, but in my unrealistic come-down after counting the ways of spending my unlikely Lotto millions in a counting-your-chickens-before-they-hatch situation, I realised that I have actually won a lottery of sorts. 

I have discovered how much I appreciate the exquisite painstaking process of writing (and editing, to a lesser extent).

In light of the recent Australian budget announcement, most people I talk to have something to say about the retirement age potentially being pushed back to the age of 70, and more often than not, nothing positive. 

I don’t feel the same way.

For one, I’m not waiting until I retire to do the things I want to do.  And two, I’ll probably be writing as long as I have the function of at least one hand, which will hopefully be beyond the age of 70.   

If I allow myself to dream for long enough to consider the possibility of writing fiction full time, the fact that the retirement age flag pole continues to shift slowly, doesn’t seem as daunting.

And if I can keep at it long enough, I will hopefully experience creativity as “allowing yourself to make mistakes” and “art [as] knowing which ones to keep” ~ Scott Adams