I’ve had to turn away from blogging. Both here and on my other beloved blog.

(certainly not forever, though – only for the moment).

Frankly, I’m a woman possessed. I only have eyes for my novel: it visits my dreams and occupies my thoughts during the day-lit hours. I am consumed by the narrative, the characters, the minutiae of editing through a microscope. It’s tunnel vision. It’s where all my writing energy wants to flow. Any ideas for the blog have since escaped the page.

I’m in the nitty-gritty. There’s this gut-fuelled seismic urge to complete the project. But I won’t rush it either.

I have just completed a wonderfully thorough self-editing course with the Writers Workshop which I highly recommend. Brilliant tutoring and peer feedback. Over six weeks it covered the nuts and bolts: plot and structure, character, voice, point of view and psychic distance (this really opened my eyes), prose, and all sorts of personal questions on my project. This simple outline doesn’t do the course justice. Needless to say I’m now itching to turn my novel inside out and fashion it into the story it needs to become…

…I am open to surprises.

Until then, I will be back hither and thither. I know I need to write about my time as a mentee on the Womentoring Project but I simply haven’t had the head space to sit down and think it through properly (even though it ended last November). But I will.

…and I will write about my experience. Working with SJ Bradley overhauled my creative process.

I’m glad I wrote this post. It’s been four months since I wrote the last one. I feel relieved too – that I’m giving myself absolute permission to focus completely on my novel now.

This is how it has to be.

Guess I’ll be seeing you a little later.