I knew this would happen

Hello there

I knew this would happen.

Pretty sure I am not the first person to make grand plans and start a new project while on holiday, only to find the realities of everyday life makes things somewhat trickier on return.

This was always going to be a busy couple of weeks. I am deep in a challenging piece of freelance content design work with a couple of extra bits and bobs to finish off in the evenings. For sure, I picked a bad time to try and gather some novel writing momentum.

However, rather than feel sad about it, I have twice added new words to those I wrote while I was away. There are fewer than 500 of them, but they are quite good words and include the first bit of dialogue.

It's clear that if I am going to write a full draft this year – and it still feels like a very big if – it’s going to be in fits and starts. There will be no sabbatical or month by the sea or expensive writing retreat. I’m going to have to work in the gaps and cracks of work and parenting. My victories will need to be small and frequent by necessity. And that’s all right.

It is such early days and I am still finding the voice for this new, currently first-person narrator. Weirdly, I am already developing a strong sense of having something to say too. And I think what that something is will become more apparent to me the more that I just get on and write.

Anyway, this is all ahead of me and the progress since my first missive could be generously called incremental. But it is progress and I said Beating, this newsletter, would be a place to document and share as I go.

And so here I am and here we are.

More soon,

Iain