Hiatus

I'm taking a little break from writing posts for this blog.

Quite aside from a lack of topics to inspire a burst of writing, I still haven't managed to replace this rather unreliable laptop, and the precious few waking hours I have with the family on a typical weekday require my personal attendance.

I'll be back once the muse returns and clears away the excuses.

Moving from "how" to "what"

It's amazing how setting course can make you relax.

Last week I was writing about the tension and frustration of fixating on near-term goals at the expense of mid- or long-term goals.  In the course of that post I referred to my long-term goal of writing an as-yet undefined manuscript of some kind.  However realistic it may be, almost everyone harbours an ambition to write a novel, or to publish something of substance.  In my case I've always felt it to be a little more certain than not, but I've been deterred by two major concerns:

• my writing won't be good enough; and
• my ideas will be hopelessly derivative.

Writing this blog is part of my response to the first point.  Honing my skills and putting my writing in front of an audience seems to me to be a good way to ensure my writing's up to snuff.