Two Weeks with the Queen of Writers' Block

In what can only be described as an extraordinary feat of procrastination, this afternoon I picked up the copy of Two Weeks with the Queen by Morris Gleitzman that is sitting on the spare bed and started reading.

I have a lot of uni work to do. Possibly more uni work than anyone has ever had ever. That’s a pretty safe claim, I reckon. Sure, some people have multiple degrees in neuroscience but did you know I have to read 20 pages of boring readings and watch a recorded lecture and make three postings on an online forum? THREE. Anyway, despite all of this I thought it was a really good idea to pick up a children’s novel and read it instead of doing any of those things.

I finished it. I read the whole thing in about an hour I’d say. This is not an amazing act of reading prowess. It’s quite short. It’s called Two Weeks with the Queen after all; it’s only about 130 pages long. Boyfriend is teaching it to his grade 8 class, which is why it was on the bed in the first place.

I’m not here to talk to you about the story. It’s a good story. I’d completely forgotten almost all of it, but it’s good. And it has really good characters, and it makes you laugh and then tear up a bit. But it’s not what I’m blogging about.

I’m blogging about the introduction. In this new edition, Gleitzman has a little intro talking about how the book came to be and how he got it published and that sort of thing. He says he was trying to write something completely different, a story about fruit bats or something. He was a new writer, he’d planned it all out, started drafting it, had been working on it for weeks when suddenly, like a bolt of lightening, he had the idea for Two Weeks instead.

And then the bastard just wrote it.

In about a month, without any planning, Morris Gleitzman wrote an entire, internationally best selling novel about a boy who goes to England so he doesn’t have to watch his brother die of cancer. Morris you bastard, I hate you. (Dear Mr. Gleitzman I actually love you, you were one of my favourite authors as a child, please do not take this personally, thanks for reading my blog, love your work, Lizzy).

There are two schools of thought when it comes to writing. Well there’s heaps, probably, but lots of people either think that it’s magic – a burst of inspiration comes to you, or it’s dedication – you have to write every day even when you’re uninspired because it’s not magic, it’s hard work so stop your moaning and get writing.

It’s clearly both. Well I think it’s clear anyway, and Morris agrees with me it seems. He says in his introduction, “Much as we authors might think we’re special because we make up stories, there’s a mystery at the heart of what we do… So if we’re sensible, and fair, we share the credit with that mystery.”

Unfortunately for me, I can’t claim to practise the teachings of either school of thought. Much as I’d love to say that I’m a writer, the reality is that I haven’t written anything aside from these blogs in years. And even the blogs are now a weekly struggle for me. If I ever skip a Sunday you can bet your bum that I’m either very busy, very uninspired, or both. And I’ve just skipped two Sundays in a row. Two weeks. Two weeks, not with the Queen, not with inspiration or hard work, but with nothing. No desire to write, no ideas to write about and no inclination to care, really.

Except I do care. Whenever I have these lapses in blogging, I am also plagued by the feeling I should just give up. What’s the point, a small voice complains, why bother? You don’t write anything of substance anyway, no one cares if you stop entirely and never blog again. But what’s worse still is that blogging is what ties me to writing. If I were to give it up, I’d really have to acknowledge that I’m not a writer, that I am, in fact, a fraud, and I’m not quite ready to give that up yet.  

So once again I find myself struggling for a new blog direction, and secretly, in spite of all the uni work I have, I’m also still searching for inspiration to write other things too. Somewhere deep down I still feel I have a novel in me. Maybe I *should* stop moaning and start writing, but in reality I am still waiting for the lightening bolt.

Maybe I should try writing about fruit bats for a bit.

I spun on my chair and took about 20 photos. This was the best one. So creative.