I'm in the middle of a transition at the moment, a change in how my whole life works that's going to take a good six months to perhaps a year to settle down. Gone is a major sink in my time, even though I've brought in new activities and new responsibilities at my job(s). And in its place is a surprising lack of writing - the extra time available to me hasn't automatically converted itself into more words on the page.

Which is frankly a "duuuh" moment, but it's not what I expected. I spent much of my time earlier this year railing against how little time I had to write, and now that I have time, I find an amazing number of things to do instead of writing, including nothing at all - staring off into space and running whatever story I feel like through my imagination. More fool me, really, I should have known better.

It's scarier, in some ways - I no longer have a huge, obvious and acceptable excuse to not have written, or not have written my best. That excuse had me puzzled over the idea of writing as scary, but I get it, now.

Blank pages are scary, as are half-finished novels, and manuscripts that require complete, destructive redrafts. I have, above my desk, an index card that says You've already written the worst novel you're ever going to write. Which is true - tucked away in a box with its notes is the manuscript for a truly awful novel. It starts in one tense and morphs into another by chapter 2, characters and entire plot lines fall by the wayside a third of the way in, and you can pick when I got lost and desperate for plot along the way, because something explodes, and my characters run away. Again. There's more running in that novel than Doctor Who. I'd have to try, really try to write a novel worse than that one.

But blank pages are still intimidating, and I'm still searching for what keeps me writing.

Some days it's easy - some days, I get up at 5am to get into the city before 7. It means I miss peak hour traffic, ride the train in for free, and have my shared-office to myself for at least 90 minutes before I even have to open the helpdesk. And I spend most of that nintely minutes writing - sometimes it's "trying to write", instead of writing and sometimes it's "checking something on the internet", but most of the time it's writing.

And it's not too difficult. I think the fact that it's so early means my Editor is still asleep, and so are most of my insecurities. I might not write brilliantly, but that doesn't matter. I write.

It's the days when I don't have to get up that early - when I wake up at 8 for my other job, or whenever I feel like on a weekend - that I struggle, really struggle to get any writing done. Those are the days I stare at the wall and go somewhere else in my head, or learn how to make spiral sponge icecream cake, or get to my ironing pile.

I've made resolutions several times to get up early, because that seems to work so well the other days, but that hasn't happened yet. I'm not a morning person, but I'll get there. I just need to find the carrot that will get me out of bed earlier purely for the purposes of writing.

Accountability

One thing I have found works - most of the time - is accountability. Having to tell the world where you're up to. Nanowrimo does it well - a little counter that displays everywhere below your name, shouting to everyone how many words you've ploughed through this month. I tried to instigate something like that on this site, actually - a counter I'd update with where I was up to with Shadowren. It failed miserably - it's too much of a hassle to update and recreate all the time, but I might have to reconsider the approach.

My mother runs a creative writing class at the local community learning centre, and one of her students styles herself as her writer friends' 'conscience' - she offers to send emails to those who want them, asking "Have you written today?". A gentle nudge to get bum-in-chair, fingers-on-keyboard. That's partly what writer's groups can be for - people you have to face when you haven't written anything. I like the idea of my 'conscience' emailing me asking if I've written yet, though I doubt it would work for me. I already have reminders papered to my desk, on my phone, constantly in my head. I need a cattle prod, not a nudge. But it might work for some.

What's your secret?