Category: Uncategorized

Want to know how to write 50,000 words fast? Throw some of them away.

I’m not joking. The essence of writing 50,000 words in a month for National Novel Writing Month – or of writing 2000 words to a features editor deadline, or indeed of writing anything to time, is not getting stuck. And the biggest trap for writers – the biggest sink-hole for productivity – is when you end up wrestling with a recalcitrant passage. It just doesn’t flow right and nothing you do seems to unsnag it. But it’s a thousand words and that’s part of your word count.

My advice – throw the duff text away and start again. You won’t regret it. One of the biggest traps when re-casting is revising older text. It always frames and shapes what you are trying to do. Better to re-start with a blank page. An hour spent writing fresh…

It was after 1984 when I read the novel of the same name, hiding under the covers, reading by the dying light of a 50-cent flashlight as Winston and Julia performed more unspeakable acts under their own sheets; Winston apprehensive of Big Brother’s all-seeing eyes, me fearful of mother coming in to ask why I was reading something so vulgar at such a young age. When asked what I thought of the book, it didn’t take a bucket of rats to make me cast Winston aside…instinct alone inspired me to decry the book as “all right, but the sex was pointless and unnecessary.” And life continued as normal, the irony of my betrayal reduced to nothing more than an uncomfortable rattle at the back of my mind that has never left me to this day.

But forbidden fruit and verboten vegetables leave an aftertaste in the back of the throat…