So everything’s been set in motion.

My course has begun, my new freelance work job is up and running, which’ll give me four clear writing days or so a week, and spiritually, I feel ready for anything, reinvigorated.

I feel a new sense of purpose and confidence but, of course, people with a ten-second attention span like myself can always be blown off course easily. So I’m working on a number of projects which will hopefully provide me with a bit of variety from day-to-day.

I was chatting with someone about this the other day. I miss the daily deadlines I used to have at work, I miss them dearly, and have often struggled to impose my own on my writing work, and I think it’s a common problem for writers.

It’s not that I’m not writing from day-to-day, but I could happily fiddle around with the same scene till doomsday, when what I should be doing is forcing myself to draw a line under it at a specified time, and then move on.

Now, at least, with the MA, I’ll be getting the kind of regular feedback that will enable me to move forward, to pick up the pace a little.

What about you? Presuming, you’re writing in your own time, or are not getting paid, what kind of discipline do you place on yourself to keep moving forward with your writing?

***

I love reading novels, and there’s never a book too far from my side. And once I’ve started reading a book, I force myself to finish it, whether I like it or not.

But I’m struggling with Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s beautifully written and everything, but the entire book is infused with such a sense of cataclysmic disaster for the father and son who roam the dusty post-apocalyptic road of the title, that I can’t hardly bear to read on.

It’s an absolutely heart-breaking book. I’m  only half way through it, and I don’t know if I can bear to read on. My nerves are shot. Christ knows, you won’t see me going to see the Viggo Mortensen movie when it eventually emerges.

Anyone else read it? If so, please tell me that everything’s going to be okay?