Return to Planet Fiction: Writing for fun (and not a lot of profit)

Almost all of the writing I do for fun - as opposed to the stuff I do get paid for in the day job - is for this blog, and after 15 years of it, it remains an enormously satisfying outlet for the rubbish that builds up in my skull.

But I also still write fiction for kicks, outside the howling needs of this daily blog. And while I've shared parts of it here, I'm usually useless at actually doing anything with it, mainly because I lose all interest once I've finished. It's getting the thing done that I'm in it for.

One of the hoariest of clichés is that writers hate to write, but love to have written - but puzzling it out, getting the plot in order, trying to make the characters sound like actual human beings, that's the game for me. Once it's done, I'm on to the next thing, and it's all a good workout for the mental muscles.

I still get enormously stuck on things. I got incredibly mired in a novel I've been working on for a while - a family epic about life in late 20th-century Aotearoa filtered through the lens of one night in 1979 - and was sitting at the 60,000 word mark for almost a year, before I got off my arse and got cracking again.

(It was the tangled weave of the plot that brought it all to a halt - it always is - and it was only one I could get around by slicing 10,00 words that I'd already lovingly crafted and cutting out the bullshit.)

But I'm glad to be on that wagon, and I'm ensuring that I spend at least half an hour every day on it, even with two pre-schoolers, I can usually find 30 minutes somewhere in the day. And when I go to bed at night, I'm always slightly strangely chuffed that I've done something, even if it was a tiny bit of revision, or a hundred new words.

It certainly helps that I have recently been reading some of my very favourite books and comics, the ones that always fire me up to write something myself. Almost all of my (not that regrettable) fan fiction days were written when I was high on 90s Grant Morrison comics, I couldn't finish Flex Mentally without being inspired to do something - anything - to keep that vibe high.

The issue with that is that I have to make an extra effort not to just echo that stuff that inspires me. Things like the Deadwood TV show or James Ellroy's books always make me want to do it for myself, but I've got to be really careful about imitating those very specific styles.

(It's a bit like binge watching Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I do not recommend, purely because you properly can't help yourself from turning into Larry David.)

But any kind of art that inspires you to put more art into the universe is good and worthwhile, for yourself, if nobody else. Go on and get stuck in.