On various writers’ sites it is suggested that one should self-tether to a regular writing schedule to produce, let’s say, a thousand words a day. This routine is recommended so that the current work might be finished some time before the arrival of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (I think at least one of them is here already, but I diverge).  As it is, I write at least a thousand words a day before breakfast in diaries, notebooks and Word files and on Evernote, generally in response to my reading during the 3.00 am Insomnia Shift. Or to incessant Nietzschian nightmares of the Eternal Return (the ghost of some book I tried to write years ago but abandoned). These words don’t count though.

Just once did I try this recommendation. It was late 2023 and early 2024. I wrote one thousand words first thing each day for Book One of a new series. I couldn’t believe how effective this strategy was. The words piled up quickly and a complete manuscript appeared. The author didn’t seem to be the same “me” as the previous incarnation and  undoubtedly needed a new name. What would it be? Before that could be decided I had to pause because I had neglected so much else (having pressed the “hold” button so firmly) and then I was sucked into the usual vortex. The book, and the series, have languished since.

 In fact none of my grand projects is ever really finished. Some almost achieve line honours but fall because I can’t stand doing yet more edits or I have found a new angle I want to put into Chapter X or something requiring extensive research has inserted itself into my consciousness at the very moment I was opening the edits file.

I am sick of my own unfinished books, and this means I am sick of their author as well, I want to shut her up and move forward into new scenarios which I can feel shaping themselves through various still incoherent images. They suggest to me a space far more appropriate than this merry-go-round posthuman nightmare dominated by nostalgic and anemoiac hangovers.  (This observation led me to consider the appropriate cocktails for this condition, leading to the development of the FORLORN NOSTALGIA and the RAISE THE ALARM – see forthcoming Cocktail Post).

In the meantime I decided to bring these almost-finished projects to an end and gave myself a deadline of the end of summer (this is Australia, so that is around February) after which I would totally devote myself to my my futuristic post-apocalyptic picaresque adventure/thriller/romance series.

But the effort of finishing old stuff feels insuperable and pointless. It is like trying to complete a very complex piece of embroidery on a linen tablecloth you inherited from your grandmother. You promised you would do it, but now your grandmother is dead and so is your mother and nobody is even vaguely interested in embroidery and who uses linen tablecloths anyway they would only get filthy from the takeaway juices dripping through the cardboard box you now eat from after the food is delivered in a paper bag by some anonymous person who leaves it at the front door. You don’t even need to pay by credit card anymore.

So you won’t need a ladies’ reticule to keep your credit cards in.

I guess my question is: is it a waste of time to keep going on the old stuff? Or should it be put aside somewhere on a USB stick in a plastic box where it will be forgotten and ultimately sent to the tip leaving no trace anywhere in the sentient universe? At least if these various blocks of narrative turn into “books” they might live on for a while in a library – maybe. Thus do I console myself for all these years of wasted effort.