Sacha Groves

The wisdom of the wider writing community is this: to be a writer, one has to write. It's true. You need to write something, anything every day. It's the only way to get into a routine, to make it a habit. It's the only way to practise your craft. You have to do it every day, and you'll get better at it every day. But what of days like today? You have a couple of writing projects with a few hundred or a few thousand words written but you just can't face adding a chapter to any of them. The previous chapter you wrote on one of them took the story so far away from your outline that you're struggling to figure out how to continue the story. The tangent is good enough that you don't want to scrap it and take another pass at the chapter in the hope it plays nice and sticks to the plot, but perhaps that's what needs to happen. It might double the length of the story to try and get it back on track and it's supposed to be a fucking short novel to begin wi

I took option 4.

With a pen and paper. Like I'm rocking the goddamned middle ages. So, I'm home sick. It happens a lot now. Hayfever gives me sinus problems. Sinus problems give me headaches. Headaches plus general depression mean I stay home and take sick leave (not that I should, I still get shit loads of work done. Plenty of my coworkers "work from home" rather than take sick leave, but I'm too ethical for that - sigh, that's a rant for another time). But, really what happens is I start think about the future and what my goals are and yet another midlife crisis is formed. It's not an original first world problem, but I really hate the 9-5 grind. I would much rather work for myself or at least less. Of course, I have a mortgage to pay, so it's never as easy as all the self help, "go do what you love" articles that show up daily on Medium seem to make out. (and to add to the "rant later" list, you only ever read the articles from the people w

1) This blog. No, really. sachagroves.com is up for renewal and I came here to see what, if anything, I was doing with it. 2) That I was using it as a progress diary. Doesn't even sound like me! But what a great idea! 3) The Cull. It's the first story idea on my list of story ideas, but I haven't even looked at that list for yonks. I had forgotten the idea and had forgotten I had started to write the fucking thing!  I reinstalled Scrivener just to open the file back up to read it. Crap, complete crap. BUT, there's some promise there and, zarquon if I could just get back into writing. I enjoy it so. 4) I want to write. Be a writer. Do those thing. Do ALL the things. 5) No seriously, I had forgotten it all. I think there may be something wrong with my brain. So, the question is: Do I use this newly (re)discovered progress blog to try and springboard into a writing habit again? That really is a question. The question. Capital THE and all that. It's worth some

1) Other work got in the road of WHS. Might try to do an hour tomorrow, despite Friday being a day of rest from set goals. 2) Xbox fitnessed. 3) Wrote 400 words of The Cull before realising I was writing a giant hole for myself that was completely unnecessary. Will fix it next week. 4) See ya Monday.

1) Did WHS work. 2) Worked out. Dance Centralled. 3) Wrote 700 words on The Cull. It's already going places I didn't intend. But that's the wonder and beauty of writing.