There’s a part of writing that I really dislike. More than editing, even when I’ve had to make a significant change or rewrite a whole ending. More than marketing, which makes me feel like I’m dying inside.

It’s starting a new book.

There is nothing that terrifies me more than that first blank page staring at me coldly from the screen, waiting expectantly for words to fill it.

Now, I’m great at coming up with ideas for stories. I have stacks of them. But I’m terrible at sitting down at fleshing them out, plotting scenes, coming up with character backstories. I prefer to just start bashing words out on the computer and hope that somehow it’ll all end up ok. Usually it does, but not without some extensive handwringing from me in the editing stage when I realise all my timelines are out of place and character ages make no sense at all.

Starting a new book requires so much discipline, to force myself to sit down and start afresh. It requires a huge amount of energy to start shaping an entirely new story with new characters. It also means I have to face my fears that perhaps the last book I wrote was indeed “the last” and I’ve run out of creative steam.

Happily, that’s not happened yet, but I always fear it, every time I start again.

I also worry about wasting my time – if the idea I’ve come up with just doesn’t work, or doesn’t have enough meat on its bones to make a full book, I could waste hours of drafting only to come to that conclusion a month or two later.

But, here I sit, in front of my laptop once again. Pushing aside those worries, those fears, that tiredness, that confusion. Because I have another idea, and it’s one that demands my attention.

So I’m going to face that blank page, summon as much courage and creativity as I can, and start. Again.