Back in March, I started reading Julia Cameron's Artist's Way, and I followed its course through to the end. It helped me to feel a bit more empowered at the time, and looking back, I wanted some of that to spill over into this blog, so that I could share my experience and work. As part of that, I've published some posts that I'd previously left as draft - even if they're not perfect.
I'd also got a copy of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down The Bones at the end of last year, which also inspired me to free up my writing. I'm not sure that either use the phrase, but they both encourage that principle "just turn up at the page".
However, I'm now coming to terms with a pragmatic realisation that I might never achieve my goal of writing science fiction novels. Adams Roberts' Getting Started in Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy did give me specific and practical guidance for this too. It has been a productive year since I informally set up a SMART target for 2017 of writing 100k words, without worrying about whether they were "right". But I'm admitting to myself what I've done always tends toward exposition of setting, not fun and exciting narratives that I'd want to read.
So that leaves me somewhere that I can just write any old stuff occasionally, enjoying the satisfaction of getting a few ideas down - as I have done since I was a teenager, writing a spontaneous journal without any guidance. It doesn't really matter whether anyone wants to read those ideas as long as I've got something from it myself. Also, I can't realistically see any negative consequences for sharing this kind of "blah".
By the way, as part of this restart, the page has had a bit of rebranding. I'd come to regret picking the previous Heretic Space Cadet title in haste. The new 'crow view' name was available and short (though I've also chosen in on the spur of the moment). It seems suitable as the name of my birthplace could have meant crows' clearing. I don't think of myself as a corvid (certainly not with the insight of Ted Hughes' Crow), nor do I think I've got some kind of better perspective from to top of a ship's mast. But I think it will do.
