I seem to have lost my ability to focus and force my way back into a novel. So today I introduced a period of martial law. Never leaving my desk, writing a set amount during a set period of time, all the familiar methods I used to fall back on. There is great satisfaction to be had from looking at the empty page, at your notes, at what you’ve already done, then will yourself, almost force yourself, to write some more, and finding that it actually works. It means I am still able to use my imagination to escape from this world into the imagined world of my novel.
Sheer will. Sometimes it takes sheer will and martial law to type one page.
Pamuk, Orhan. Memories of Distant Mountains: Illustrated Notebooks, 2009-2022. United States, Knopf Canada, 2024. pg 162