The Beginning…

To misquote the opening line of one of my favourite films, “For as long as I can remember, I always wanted to be a writer.”

However, I’ve always been lazy.

It’s probably my defining feature, not that I’m bragging. Just look at my favourite pastimes. Films. Books. Computer Games. Reading crap on the Net. Drinking. All things that involve sitting on my arse and not really moving, and only drinking really needs to involve other people. So I’m lazy and like my own company.

Writing involves sitting on your arse and barely moving, and doesn’t really involve other people. So you would think that me and writing would be a perfect fit. But this is where laziness comes back and lazily kicks me in the arse. Most of my hobbies are passive, they happen to me and I don’t have to work hard at them. Sure, books can be challenging and you do have to interact with computer games, but on the whole it’s not hard work.

Writing is hard work. I can tell without doing much of it, and I have tried. Countless times I have started, but unlike John Humphries, I shall not finish. I read about writing all the time and like anything you want to be good at it requires hard work and practice. And my laziness constantly gets in the way.

So every so often, I pick up a pen…well no it’s 2015, I turn on my laptop, and I start something. I’ve got better over time. I did submit a short story last year to a competition, but didn’t get shortlisted. I submitted a script to 2000ad, but I’m still waiting on that one 6 months later. Last year I wrote 20,000 words during NaNoWriMo (google it, I’m too busy talking about me to explain everything) but decided it was a piece of shit and pressed the dreaded delete button. So I write really short stuff in a couple of days or decide to quit because it’s rubbish. I’d like to say I believe I couldn’t write, or don’t have any ideas but it would be a lie.

I’m just lazy. There’s another film to watch, a new episode of Agent’s of Shield, or the new Brandon Sanderson book is out. And I’ll watch the film and think, yeah I would have done it this way. And watch the episode and think, this could be more exciting if they had just gone here. I read the book and think I wish I wrote like this.

And I think…I wish I was a writer.

So that’s a long prologue (and since I read epic fantasy I do love me a good prologue) to say I’m starting again. I’m going to write something. And instead of keeping it to myself I’m going to share with the world what I am doing. I say the world, that is ambitious, but technically the whole world could see it. I am hoping that blogging regularly about my writing will keep me going. Also I’ll do all the other boring blog stuff like talk about what I’m reading, watching and playing and about my life in general in the hope that I may be inspired.

Or I may get bored because I’m lazy.

Only time will tell.

I’ve gone on long enough now, and you must have Game of Thrones to watch. So my next post will explain how I am starting.

In due course…