“Just write. If you do that, the other stuff will sort itself out.”

I remember hearing this (or some response very close to it) at an event when an author was asked for advice on how to take on the enormity that is ‘the novel’. It’s one of those answers that can come across as a trite or dismissive, but there is a truth to it that every professional writer recognises.

Writing can be hard work. When it is all going well, the words come easily and you find the story telling itself with, apparently, very little help from you. You’re a conduit through which your characters – if well-constructed and imagined – play out their roles in your fictional world. Your job is merely to transcribe their experiences and actions on to the page via the keyboard. That’s when it’s going well…

When it’s not going well, you sit with your head in your hands worrying about why the ideas won’t come and why you ever embarked on such a stupid project in the first place. You wait in stationary traffic, or queue in line at the supermarket, hoping – praying – for an epiphany. The more you stress, the more the story seems to be ‘getting away from you’.

When you’re in this bad place, writing can seem like a waste of time. Nothing you put down on the page is good enough. It’ll all end up being deleted anyway, so what’s the point? This is the tough part about writing; when the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune are all heading your way, and you can’t get your mojo working. I suspect it’s when the budding author decides this writing lark isn’t really for him or her, and when manuscripts are abandoned for the other great idea that popped into their heads the other night – that would be an easier book to write, right?

Authors know that when they’re in this dark place they have to write their way out of trouble. When the sky is black with those hurtling projectiles, the best place to take shelter is behind your computer screen (mine has its fair share of arrow holes in it), ducking down low, with your fingers still jabbing away at the keyboard.

My current project is the follow-up to my book, Mutant City, and I’ve been going through everything I’ve described above ‘when it’s not going well.’ I’ve written some terrible stuff over the last few weeks, and had, until yesterday, started to convince myself that this book was doomed. But I continued to write. Then, yesterday afternoon, I had ‘the moment.’ Something I’d written a fortnight ago – a little kernel of an idea hidden away in a line of dialogue – was what I’d been looking for: the thing I’d been searching for that would make the book come together. I recognised this moment thanks to the trumpet-playing angels swooping about my head, and the shower of silver confetti that miraculously fell from the heavens.

“Just write. If you do that, the other stuff will sort itself out.”