Starting something brand new at 57 years old is hard work. And to make things worse, as well as it being hard work, the thing that I’ve chosen to do for the first time at 57 years old is also bloody hard work.
Writing a book is the hardest kind of work I’ve done in years. Maybe ever. And I’m also having to work really hard at doing this hard kind of work. Investing lots of hours for, sometimes, very little.
One sentence.
Or one word.
Right now, I’m comparing what I think is good writing by others, to my writing. That’s probably a bad idea. Because I am preconditioned to think (know?) that Dave Trott and John Green are good writers both because I really like their work, and because they are commercially successful.
Me? I’ve written and sold nothing. So there’s no external information for me to use. No external information to help me work out if what I write is any good. Even though I quite like writing what I write, it’s hard to work out if I’d like to read my own stuff.
(I don’t like my actual speaking voice either. So when I imagine my written words read out loud in my own voice, they sound worse. To me).
I do, occasionally, get nice email about what I have written on my 50odd blog. That’s valuable. Sometimes, people tell me why they like what I write. It’s normally to do with my perspective. What I notice and how I see things. That’s where, ‘What the world looks like. To me. From here.’ comes from. It comes from 50odd readers.
What I do know is that, when it comes to my writing, at this precise moment I am not disciplined enough, structured enough, brave enough or being bothered enough to be doing exactly what I should be doing. I may be in shock. In shock that the process is so slow, hard and opaque.
But maybe it’s a good sign that I know what I need to do to give me the best possible chance of success. Now, all I have to do, with this brand new and bloody hard work, is work harder.