Drifting Away

By Nick Cross

Photo by Horia Varlan

What does it mean to be a writer? It’s a question that I’ve been grappling with a lot this year. And it’s a question that seems to naturally spawn many others:

• Do I need to be published?
• Do I even enjoy writing anymore?
• What would happen if I stopped writing altogether?
• What would my friends think of me?
• How much of my personal identity is bound up in my status as a writer?

Starting Over

By Nick Cross



When I used to write a blog post every week, it was easy – I sat down on Thursday lunchtime and typed out 500 words. Then on Friday lunchtime, I went through, edited it and posted it. But now that I only post every couple of months, the whole process has become unaccountably difficult.

Let me elaborate. As it’s my 44th birthday today, I thought I would write a post all about getting older and how it's affected my writing. And I did – there’s 900 words of it in a separate Word file. But the more I wrote that post, the more I didn’t want to write it – it was moany and self-pitying and frankly a bit dull. Even so, for the last couple of weeks, I’ve been slogging through it, adding a few words every day but never getting it into a shape where I’d want to actually show it to anyone.

So, with only a couple of days left before this post goes live, I did one of the most frightening and powerful things a creative person can do.

I started again.

It's Nanowrimo and time for Writercise Boot Camp - How to Get Motivated and Write that Novel!

Unlike my warm hearted, keep at-it post  on the joys to come when you've sold your first book, this is going to be a motivational post of the boot camp variety. Read on only if you're tough enough.