Thursday 11 October 2007

And Breathe

Well it's been a long time since I blogged here but I thought that as this week I delivered novels to both my U.K and U.S publishers I'd take a moment to pause and breathe and have a little think.

It's been a pretty crazy wonderful year so far. Four books published, three in this country and one in the U.S.A and three books written, two for children and one for adults - a combined total of 250,000 words!

I know what you might be thinking, you might be thinking she writes all those books in one year? She can't be a proper writer, surely it takes years to write one book and there has to be angst and crying and drafts and redrafts to be truly creative?

And the truth of it is that there all of those things, but writing is not only my passion and my joy - it's my job. And when you sit down from nine to five, five days a week to write and often work the weekends too, you can pack a lot of angst and creativity in to your working week. You can get a lot done and know that it's the very best work that you can do.

Because if I have one rule about writing its that I always give it my one hundred percent very best effort, that I never turn anything in that I haven't laboured to make as perfect as I possibly can. Of course it never is perfect, there's always more to be done and discovered in a bid to write that perfect book. But that's what writing's all about isn't it?