The Next JK Rowling

This new life of mine is going quite well at the moment. I've stuck to the plans, and somehow, my life has taken a significant upward turn. What's more, I believe that this upward turn will not be followed by a downward one if I stick at it. It's only been 10 days, but each of those 10 days has been filled completely with activity and brimming with confidence. Sleeping at the right times, waking up at the right times, a mixture of relaxation and activity and no alcohol! That has caught many people by surprise... Many people think I'm joking when I say I no longer drink, until I tell them I really am giving up completely. To some people, an image of me without a Jack Daniels and coke in my hand is as incomplete as Big Ben without the clock. It's been an interesting 10 days for sure. There have even been sprinklings of karma involved, as I have got a promotion at work. Something tells me this is a reward for beginning this new life. Something else tells me there is no such thing as karma.

One aspect of this new life I haven't really succeeded at so far however is this "writing a book" idea. Again, I know its only been 10 days in, but too quickly I have sunk into autobiographical mode. I've been writing about myself for so long, that I drift into incorporating too much of my own life into what is supposed to be a fictional story. The primary requisite for a writer is originality. Building ideas from scratch, conceiving plots from your imagination. Not writing a fictional story that's based on true events. Having mucked about with a few plot ideas, the only thing that screamed out at me was, "All this is just about you isn't it?" And it isn't as if I can just ask others for their opinions on what to write about. I can't expect others to supply me with ideas because then the result will not be uniquely mine. Someone might well provide me with a great-sounding idea on a story, but then how am I supposed to develop plots and characters if they are not my plots and characters? I am having immense difficulty in letting my imagination run free, feeling the need to reign it in and not let it get out of control. I know I have some writing ability, and others have said so aswell, but I'm beginning to think that fictional writing isn't really my forte. I do not have an active enough imagination or enough ... "joie de vivre" to successfully build and write a story that isn't based on myself. One of my aims in writing this was to make it a story of accomplishment with a happy ending, but having drifted into writing about myself too much, I have pretty much devised characters and plots that are completely the opposite, for it is all I know. Having written negatively of myself for a few years now, I am trapped in a habit of writing in a contravening manner.

Something else I noticed a couple of days ago aswell, whilst writing a blog post on a completely different matter, is that I have a tendency on going off on a huge tangent when I'm in full flow. I become a bit abstract which, in a story, could be deemed irritating. I might well be good at describing events that have happened or in my own head, but the imagination isn't sufficiently there. I'm not going to delete all the ideas I've made, for something may well come of them, but I'm not entirely confident its going to work, which is a shame.

But hey ho, never mind. Things are on the up, and I don't want to let this get me down. It is a small aspect of an ever-changing life, and there are plenty of things to be cheerful about right now. Long may this continue.