Limbo Land

I feel like I’m in a state of limbo.

Having had a week away last week for Anne’s birthday, the plan was to come back and get back into writing mode. 

However.

My book is still with the editor and has been for six weeks and counting. The holdup has been for various reasons, the latest of which is that he’s had to go into hospital, so who knows if I will get anything back or if he keels over first (please let that last comment be trite humour and not a tempter of fate!). If not, I can’t afford another editor as I’ve already paid him which was probably a rookie mistake.

I don’t even know exactly what an editor does. I don’t know what state the typescript will be if it does ever come back. Will I need to do a massive revision? Or will there only be a light tidy-up required before I move it on to the next stage? I knew, even before I gave it to him that it wasn’t perfect, but I think it is quite good, and getting close to good enough to send out into the world while I work on my next thing with the lessons I’ve learnt from the first.

You might wonder why you should buy it if I don’t think it is perfect. I can only say that everyone who works at bettering a skill, does so by putting themselves out there – unless they’re a born genius. A musician will improve by performing even if they’re still getting the notes wrong because they’re learning to get comfortable with that interaction. A painter might be display and sell their art but many years later see that the original works as immature because they have developed their artistry, but those initial stages are still part of the process.

I’ve heard of writers who have written a novel or five that they have never published because they were learning to get better at writing. But I kind of figure that with the possibility of self-publishing, all that hard work doesn’t have to stay hidden, and even if only five people read it, I can still learn from the experience as I push on to try and get better with the next one, and hopefully those five will have spent an enjoyable few hours.

And I have begun working on the next book. Not so much writing words on a page but sketching out the arc of the story, which I want to do roughly first. With the first one I was just mentally meandering and getting lost along the way. There was a stage when I wondered whether I would reach the end and it did seem like a lot of hard work. So this time, I need a skeleton in place even if I break the odd bone later.

But because I’m in just the planning stage of the second book and can’t currently progress with this first book I do feel like I’m in the air. In a state of in between. Looking forwards and backwards and not settling on either. 

Luckily, I have my running, which I can control to a degree, and having had that week of rest, I’m ploughing some of my restless energies into that. It’s been a little more organising than running of late but that’s okay. 

Having officially been put in charge of our club’s Borders League planning I pulled together a nice big team for a race on St David’s Day. That was helped by the fact that it was in our very local Birkenhead Park and no one had to travel very far. 

Also in Birkenhead Park, this last Saturday, I organised a club Parkrun Takeover: by that I mean that we had a bunch of volunteers doing three-quarters of the jobs of the regular volunteers – the crucial jobs like the time-keeping were kept in the hands of experience. And as Birkenhead is regularly in Parkrun’s top ten for numbers of runners, there are a lot of volunteers needed. We also put on a good spread of pacers from 20 minutes to 35 minutes and had a huge number of runners who showed up – just this once – in our club colours and showed the range of our runners from near the front to bringing up the rear. 

I’m not a fan of club vests on a regular basis as I feel that can appear too cliquey and put regular runners off. But as we also had our flags out and were given a nice announcement by the race director, it seemed perfectly okay to advertise the club on this one occasion. And I hope that some of the people who were new to volunteering offer their services to Parkrun two or three times a year going forward, as without the volunteers these runs just can’t happen.

As to my actual running, coming up in April, I’ve got a ten-mile fell race about which I’m a little bit scared and excited about, and then two weeks after that, I’ve got the Stratford-upon-Avon Half Marathon which always happens on the nearest Sunday to Shakespeare’s birthday which is nice. So I can’t sit on my laurels while I wait for my book to come back. There’s just too much to do.