Blogging - Momentum Matters

In the game of rugby union, match results are often determined by one thing: momentum. Whichever team gains momentum is the team that will score points. And go on to win. Or they stand a good chance of doing so. 

Blogging and writing in general are the same. You get an idea and you write through that idea. Fast. Keep the momentum high. Get the words down. Refinement can come later, but get the words down. 

When I’m writing a novel, I never worry too much about refinement until I’m a least fifty pages in. I took that advice from the Irish writer Roddy Doyle. He talked about getting fifty pages done. Then the good stuff can happen. I tried it. And I agree. 

The trouble is, if you start out picking your way through ideas, making notes, forming a plot…

Yeah, trouble. 

I know there are people who are plotters. I read an author saying they knew the ending of their novels. Long before he got to it. Made me shudder, that did. No way. I write in discovery mode all the time. I get that it’s not for everyone. But let me put it this way: I start with momentum to tell the story. And keep going all the way through. 

I can do that because I first learned to do it as a blogger. When I first started, I was Mr Cautious. Picking my way through. Trying to set out topics and sub-topics. It could take me a day to draft one post. 

And it’d be shite. 

Because I’d lost the human element. Again, I keep saying this; I make no apology for it. I sounded like someone with a rod up my back. 

When I look at my earlier novels, I can see it. My inability to set myself free. I ended up with novels that are okay. But compared with how I write now? They feel like I was trying to be too much of an author. And not enough of a working-class bloke writing novels.

I call it the “fuck it” factor. The thing that lets me be me. And write like it. There’s no point in trying to force yourself to sound professional. Like a professional author (whatever that means). Or like your English teacher at school. Or like an academic who forgot what human beings sound like. 

So, momentum. Catch it, keep it, write with it. That’s the bottom line. 

It might be shite. But you can edit it to be better. You can’t edit what you haven’t written yet.