I've done it!

So I've done some writing! 

The exclamation point i meant to convey that it's a rare thing to happen. Although I began a new novel ages ago I'd stopped writing it - why? I don't remember? Christmas maybe, general busyness? I don't know - and the longer I was leaving it the harder it became to pick it up again. 

I heard Lee Child, the author, on the radio the other day. He had set himself a day to start on his new novel and duly turned up in his office on that day at the time he'd specified, and began. Okay, so it's his job but I will never be one - a professional successful best-selling author -  if I don't write.

So this morning I sat down at the computer and after reading everything I could find about the Royal Family, golden retrievers, and a 100 ways to procrastinate, I began.

Fiction witing is a strange thing. I read over one bit I'd written and thought, "That's a dreadful thing to happen," then remembered I'd made it up. It was dreadful in a good moving way I felt. But I have no idea where ideas come from.

The characters in the dog-walking club for example, where did they come from? I don't remember sitting down and planning who should be there or what dogs they should have. Or how their story would work out. They told their own stories.

Even bits I was adding this morning came out of nowhere. I don't consciously think of possibilities; it just happens. Which is very odd. I wonder if they've done research into where ideas come from. I could google it now - but, no, I'll go back and do some more imagining. 

Writers are commonly divided into planners and pantsers i.e. those who just wing it. I very much fall into the latter category.