Ben Westerham non-fiction related blog posts.
I have, for some time now, had a well established writing routine, which sees me show up at the same place and time each day. But I recently shifted some furniture around in our living room and soon realised I had disturbed my reading habits by moving an armchair that I usually read in at lunchtime, which had me wondering, do we all have our favourite places to read?
From time to time I like to take one of those personality type tests. It can be amusing as well as informative to see the results. I did one of these a while back and had forgotten about it until I stumbled upon the results recently, part of which concerned the creator in me.
Us creative types, especially those of us who spend most of our time working alone, can become a bit self-obsessed at times. Or maybe I should have said, completely self-obsessed. When this happens I have to remind myself that no, I am not alone and that I couldn’t do what I do without the help and support of others.
When I first started writing stories it seemed all there was to do was, well, to write stories. But time and experience has shown that is not quite true and that I do, in fact, have to be a man who wears many hats. Let me explain why.
I’ve been really good about staying disciplined and writing for about 2.5 hours every morning since I went full-time with my writing last autumn. But there is a persistent problem that’s been bugging me, interruptions.
Yes, it’s true, I had the desperately unsettling experience the other day of opening a book I had bought second-hand from a well-known on-line market-place only to find a previous owner had scribbled notes on many of the pages. That’s sacrilege as far as I’m concerned.
Continue reading “Shock! Horror! Someone Scribbled in a Book I Bought”
Do you ever have that realisation that you can’t remember what books you’ve read? I did and it started bothering me. So I decided to do something about it.
I noticed the other day that I have now written and posted nearly 26,000 words to my blog. That’s a fair few words and certainly enough for a novella. It also takes time to put all those posts together, though that will have to remain a mystery as I never keep track of time spent on these posts. But seeing that word count did cause me to stop and ask why do I write these posts?
Writing is a wonderful experience when things are going well and the words pour from your fingertips like water over a fall, but what about those times when you realise you’ve got it wrong?
I sometimes see discussions about writer’s block and I wonder what they’re going on about because it’s not something that ever seems to afflict me. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other things that cause havoc with my writing.