I would like to claim I have been procrastinating for months about this post; in actual fact it has been getting on for half a century.
The issue is, I think, a firm grounding in the art of procrastination, along with a healthy dollop of self-doubt.
Writers' block? That's nothing compared to the stomach twisting, heart lurching agonies of accepting that somebody else might read, or even that they might actually want to read, what I have to say. In fact It was not really part of my agenda when I sat down to write The Minerva Project; writing is just something I do. The concept of other people reading what I have written had somehow hidden itself deep beneath layers of publishing dreams and projected successes as a multi-million pound author.
If only the rest of the world were to think the same as I do.
It would appear to me, in my own little writing world inside my head, that I am so full of wit when it comes to writing tweets of one hundred and forty characters. My perception of my own brilliance and hilarity thrives on the brevity of social media, but when it comes to the permanence of a blog, reality emerges into my head space and with it, an accompanying aura of self-doubt: yes a very definite sense of doom.
Like anyone who has ever taken the drastic step of combining paper and ink, I find it virtually impossible to prevent a tiny piece of my soul tagging along with each phrase, so that any published work becomes somewhat akin to posting naked photographs of myself on the internet. Twenty five years ago I might have possessed the self-belief to bare my inner being to the world, confident in my abilities and even oblivious to the concept of rejection. (Thankfully the World Wide Web did not exist then and consequently no such photographs exist!)
The issue is, I think, a firm grounding in the art of procrastination, along with a healthy dollop of self-doubt.
Writers' block? That's nothing compared to the stomach twisting, heart lurching agonies of accepting that somebody else might read, or even that they might actually want to read, what I have to say. In fact It was not really part of my agenda when I sat down to write The Minerva Project; writing is just something I do. The concept of other people reading what I have written had somehow hidden itself deep beneath layers of publishing dreams and projected successes as a multi-million pound author.
If only the rest of the world were to think the same as I do.
It would appear to me, in my own little writing world inside my head, that I am so full of wit when it comes to writing tweets of one hundred and forty characters. My perception of my own brilliance and hilarity thrives on the brevity of social media, but when it comes to the permanence of a blog, reality emerges into my head space and with it, an accompanying aura of self-doubt: yes a very definite sense of doom.
Like anyone who has ever taken the drastic step of combining paper and ink, I find it virtually impossible to prevent a tiny piece of my soul tagging along with each phrase, so that any published work becomes somewhat akin to posting naked photographs of myself on the internet. Twenty five years ago I might have possessed the self-belief to bare my inner being to the world, confident in my abilities and even oblivious to the concept of rejection. (Thankfully the World Wide Web did not exist then and consequently no such photographs exist!)
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