Writing rubbish is a type of writer's block, though I don't believe writer's block exists - I think it has more to do with space.  Knowing my novel wasn't going well, I decided to get some space from it.  Last Saturday, I knew there was a huge problem with Part Two so I spent Sunday wandering around some gorgeous botanical gardens and didn't turn on my computer once.  Having to negotiate London't appalling public transport (yes, thanks, tube replacement bus thing) was an extra adventure.  When I returned, I knew exactly how to repair the last seven chapters.  Some serious research and a big fat rewrite.  I sat down and wrote up a page of notes of all the things that were bothering me and then, in my new Pink Pen, wrote a list of key words.  These have turned out to be, well, key.  What I was trying to achieve suddenly became much clearer.  I've already begun and it's hard work but hard work pays off and anyway, the more time I spend with this novel, the happier I am, so I might just as well work hard to make it work.  By the time I'd done my research, I was itching to get back to actual writing.  When I got to that point, I knew I'd had enough space.
I spent two days Googling pictures of castles and trying to design my own for my main characters.  I can't draw to save my life but I drew it anyway, with numbers to indicate which pictures went where.  I was bored shitless with my heroine wandering around vaguely, lost in endless passages.  The action was slowed down to the point of death.  And if the writing is boring, then so is the reading.  Despite battling the most immense bout of depression this week (hello, whiskey bottle) I've made a good start.  Funny how rewriting is always easier than writing.

Bloomsbury writer's tip:
Curing writer's block (or saving yourself from writing rubbish):
Go away.
List key words.
Don't drink.
Rewrite.

Drew the curtains at seven this morning to see fat slob hanging naked out the landing window opposite having a cigarette.  He's been smoking out that window since his teens and gets thuggier as the years go by.  Return to my bedroom after having my tea and tidying the mugs from the lounge to find fat slob back in the window with another cigarette, this time in a foul royal blue shirt.  This is not the face of the world I want to see first thing in the morning.  Fucking peeping tom.  He freaks out my teenage daughter as the buildings are built far too close.  A gigantic hook-beaked albatross-sized seagull strolls over the rooftops, looking for prey.  Wish it would take fat slob away.  
I bet Virginia Woolf didn't have these problems when she lived in Bloomsbury.  

Some days it doesn't go at all well.  The words don't come.  They don't string together well.  My mind just seems white.  My heroine even ended up depressed because she couldn't think - because I can't think.  Does the fault lie with my novel or with me?  Is the lack of exciting, helter-skelter plot uninspiring?  Am I not suited to write a thoughtful, philosophical romance?  And doesn't that sound so utterly dull?!  For the first time starting this novel (and I'm at least a third of the way), I'm having serious misgivings about the story itself.  If something is a struggle to write, then doesn't it follow that it's a struggle to read?  While I don't find it entirely boring to write, it isn't exactly exciting and that must surely mean it won't be exciting to read either.  I had so longed to write this novel.  The idea, when I had it, simply blew me away.  I was in ecstasies.  But now that I've come to execute it, it's crumbling into dust.  My hero is turning into every other hero I've ever written - tortured and silent.  I really am sick to death of putting myself on the page.  Why can't I BE someone else to WRITE someone else?  Why do I always have to be ME?  I long to be charming and captivating and wanted my hero to be charming and captivating too, which would then contrast nicely with his tortured soul, so to speak (dear god, this is turning into a string of cliches).  But there's no contrast.  You know from the first scene that he's tortured.  What's the bloody point, then?  The truth is I'm not a good enough writer to tackle this kind of subject.  And I simply can't imagine wanting to read anything this sensitive (or, at least, it's meant to be sensitive, but I think I've failed dismally with that too as I bludgeon my way through the characters' lack of expression).  These days the fashion is for high plot, high drama, much goings on, as much horror as possible, sex, violence and ludicrousness galore.  What am I doing?  I am at a very low ebb.  My tide has gone out and I'm not sure when it's going to come back.  To continue with this hackneyed analogy, I really could do with a tsunami of writing brilliance, something to rescue the direness of my creation and turn it into the magnificent work of art I originally conceived it as.  And if the phenomenal clumsiness of that last sentence is anything to go by, I should really learn to write.

It's raining for the first time in ages in Bloomsbury.  London really needed a bit of a wash.  It's been a very dry winter and spring.  My real world job is exceedingly dull at the moment and when I got home, I put on my boots and picked up my giant birdcage umbrella and went for my regular walk around Russell Square.  Or not so regular - I don't like walking when it's hot as there are too many people out.  The square was wonderfully quiet today.  You could almost hear the fountain (which was recently turned back on) over the roar of the constant traffic.  

I've reached chapter 15 of my novel and while I still think it's going very slowly and not at all smoothly, I seem to have made some progress.  I no longer have the desire to go back and start again and most of the time I'm looking forward instead of back, which must be a good thing.  I've reached the second section, which I was hugely looking forward to, where my heroine finally meets my hero and as is usual when you can't wait for characters to meet, it's all gone very flat.  I'm not too concerned at the moment - after all, I've got a new character I need to get to know.  I always know exactly how the Big Scenes need to go - it's the small stuff in-between that has to be worked on.

Is it too soon to be dreaming of winning the Booker Prize?!