three weeks later

Thank you so much to everyone who commented on my last post! It's been a wonderful couple of weeks. I've been looking at wedding blogs far more than I'd care to admit :P With snow falling (and settling!) on London at this very moment, life seems to have taken on a kind of magic. Walks in the frosty late afternoons, wine in the evenings curled on the couch, flowers for no reason other than because "you said yes"......I know what Tom and I are experiencing with each other right now are moments I'll remember forever.

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I have stopped and started many posts here over the past few weeks. I don't know why I haven't finished them....well actually I probably do....drifting in and out of moments, and trying to be present. Wondering what I want to with this blog, not being all that inspired with its concept at the moment. Wondering whether I'm achieving what I set out to. When I started Green Ink last year I thought I wanted to create a space that would make me more accountable with my writing goals. So far I don't think I have been all that accountable, because I don't talk about my writing all that much anymore. I want that to change.

When I look at the sidebar and see where I've declared to the world that I'm "working on my first novel", I'm not lying but I also cringe a little. Everyone, it seems, is working on their "first novel". How many of us are going to actually finish it? I am writing it, certainly, when I get a moment, and am moved to, but am I working on it? Strictly speaking, no. I am nowhere near finished. Because I've let life get in the way. I also make the fatal mistake of waiting for the mood to work on it, which hardly ever comes and when it does it is at the most inconvenient times (board meetings, etc).

There's part of me that wants time away from life so I can just concentrate on writing, but I also know deep down 1) it's not really practical right now and 2) life is what feeds my writing. My story needs the fertile and rich soil of my life around it to help it flower.

So where does this leave me? With a few harsh truths in front of me that need confronting, the hardest one being that the only thing holding me back here is myself. I have set and achieved goals before. I know I can do it if I'm determined and work hard. So why is it taking so long for the penny to drop? So many people ask me "how's the novel coming?" and each time it seems to be the same answer. I'm tired of it.

I don't want to be one of those people who talks about my first novel and never actually writes it. It's time to face up to what's really going on here - fear that I'm not good enough - and just pick up where I left off, and keep going and don't stop. Even if I do feel like my days are busy and tiring and filled with other things that seem more important, I can still find time, if it's that important to me. So many people believe in me, it's about time I believed in myself.

So, no more dawdling. 2010 is the year I finish it. It will also be the year my money and my mouth will finally be in the same place.