Let me nail the ‘Long-Distance’ bit of the title as I don’t imagine that the ‘Loneliness’ part needs any explanation. It’s purely a function of time, not miles.
In the time-honoured cliché, I’d always felt a book lay within me, albeit invisibly deeply. Being made redundant and deciding to go freelance created the space and time in which to contemplate the possibility. I didn’t set out to write something that might be published. It was much more that I needed to know that I could do it; ‘it’ being create something from thin air that worked. ‘Worked’ meaning that it had integrity, a sense of purpose and being.
If you’d told me then it would take eighteen years from first contemplation to final realisation, I may well have taken up some other life challenge, perhaps crocheting or self-waxing.
But then again ...
Who, once they’ve written, would ever really want to be without the joy of sculpting a phrase that captures all you wanted – or relish that moment when a character leaps from the page in all its three-dimensional glory? I think it was Paul Auster who said that there is only one thing worse than writing, and that is ... not writing.
Of course, each of our books will differ dramatically: one of the reasons this is not a ‘How to write’ blog but an experience-sharing outreach project! It will over the coming weeks declaim as loudly as the written word can: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
So, when I sat down in front of the dreaded blank screen, what did I have before me? Just the skimpiest outline of a core idea.
I had a long-held ambition to share my passion for classical music generally, and the late string quartets of Beethoven specifically. There was my main character - a great violinist. And I had been wrestling with a Very Big Question: how to find meaning in the teeth of catastrophe? That gave me the stirrings of a philosophical purpose and narrative line.
Now all I had to do is write the thing ... oh, and earn a living at the same time.
Ian Phillips is a freelance writer for businesses whose first novel, Grosse Fugue, will be published by Alliance Publishing Press on April 3rd. He’s tweeting developments @Ian_at_theWord.
Hi Ian, thanks for sharing.
Quote: the joy of sculpting a phrase that captures all you wanted
This sums up everything for me.
I have to fit my writing around a full time job and on my days off I can become so absorbed in writing I will suddenly realise a whole day has passed without my realising it. There have been times where I have had a niggle that perhaps life is passing me by while I write. But then I will have a moment as you have described, and I know that is when I feel 'alive'.
Hi Adrian, nice to have just the one post this time!!!
I don't want to pre-empt future episodes in this saga but I can certainly say that I couldn't hazard even a guess as to how long I write each week. And to be honest, I'm rather wary of being prescriptive.
We each write what we can, when we can. For some, a disciplined number of hours is the way to go; for others, a more freewheeling approach works. I was always more of the latter type of writer. I'm not sure how I'd fare with the kind of disciplined approach that clearly suits you.
I hope over the coming weeks you'll be able to test your assumptions about writing against my experiences. We're all individuals, it's what makes us writers, after all.
All the best
Ian
Hi Lizi,
I think there's an inherent joy in writing which I will touch on in later postings. It gives the activity a purpose in itself, apart from any external validation, be that financial or not.
We need to be careful about how we seek valuation of our work. When you say about seeing if your stuff is worth anything, that's a path which can be fraught. When I first shared my 'stuff', it was with trepidation (of course) but also no sense of what I expected in return. This was a mistake which I also talk about in a future post.
Good luck
Ian