Moving On

After Christmas - as any regular visitors to this blog (there are some!) will know - I experimented with blogging a novel called The Corncrake. I wasn't looking for feedback on the writing, because I knew that whatever happened, I wasn't going to be rewriting it unless at the request of a publisher - preferably one bearing cash. Hell, I've been at this game for more years than I care to admit to and I have what a senior academic recently told me was a 'distinguished cv'. My initial reaction to this assessment was the usual 'who? me?' before it struck me that he was right. I just hadn't thought about it like that before.
Which is not in any way to say that I'm above criticism. But I'm selective about the advice I heed. I listen to my agent, whose observations are always helpful and very much to the point, a handful of writer friends who I can trust to tell me the absolute truth, but whose own work I like and respect, a few perceptive editors and excellent directors - and my sister in law, who isn't a writer, but is a voracious reader. She often proof reads for me, I can count on her to be sympathetic, but full of insights too.
So what has this to do with The Corncrake? Well - it was an experiment, so it was probably worth doing. I wanted to see how easy it was for people to read, if they would return to the blog, and so on. What I think I hadn't bargained for was that I myself fell out of love with the process, albeit not the novel. I got bored, the medium wasn't right, I wanted to blog about other things, short things, ideas, observations. And it suddenly struck me that blogging a novel in this was was sending out entirely the wrong message about me, about what I write, about the way I write now. It was, I now realise, a question of professionalism.
Somebody pointed out the risks back at the start and now I think that she was absolutely right. Because I've moved on too and started to remember who and what I am, started to rediscover my own potential as a writer - as the possessor of that 'distinguished cv'. I want to explore, experiment, push the boundaries, take the odd leap into the dark. It's what I used to do all the time when I was young and enthralled by words and ideas and their possibilities. Now, for some reason, that excitement has returned to me, a flurry of projects and proposals. Which is why I've deleted the Corncrake completely from this blog, making room for something new. Moving on....