I mentioned in my last journal that I've always dreamed about writing a novel. A few of you picked that up and hit me over the head with it.

Well, Oliver did, anyway. And I get where he is coming from. Dreaming aobut something is a dangerous business. The dream seems to be not just that one can write a novel but that it will be published and popular - that what you produce will become the next J K Rowling in terms of success.

The thing about such a dream is that, if you're sensible like me, you react to it in two ways. In one way, you recognise that that there has to be a level of self-belief. You have to believe that what you write is going to be worth starting, finishing and spending all that time on. I know this - writing a 107,000 word thesis, there were times when I wasn't sure if it was really any good. When you spend so much of your life doing something, having those kinds of questions can be incredibly demoralising, and its then that you need someone who you trust (and whose knowledge you respect) to reassure you that what you've got really is good enough - and for that matter to point out where it's not.

The other way you react to it, paradoxically, is to recognise that the chances of you ever being that successful are slim to infinitely non-existent. Very few writers ever have the kind of success Rowling has enjoyed. A few more do quite well but, in the general scheme of things, that is still a very small number.

I think it safe to say, thinking about it, that my dream to write a novel was, more generally, a dream to be a writer. That is, prosaically, to make a living out of writing, as it is something I enjoy doing - and have enough self-belief to think I do it more than passably well.

And it so happens that I have and am fulfilling that particular dream in ways I never dreamed I would. Life has placed quite a few unexpected doors in my path - I didn't go to university until I was 24, which was right for me, and which pushed me into an area I'm rather good at - research. I spend a fair amount of my working day writing, and that suits me very well.

But still, I want to write fiction. I read fiction - I love to read fiction, and out of that and my love of writing comes the desire to write fiction.

I'm also something of a musician. But here the dream was always different. I have never wanted to be successful commercially, partly because the sort of music I like is not particularly popular, partly because I know my limitations and have never felt myself to be good enough to make a living musically, whereas I have always believed I could do so with writing. My dream musically was simply to be able to compose, nothing more, and to be able to sit down and just play, with no music in front of me. And I can do that.

So I spend a lot of time composing and playing music with no expectation at all that anyone will listen to it (though if you want to: [link] ). I thoroughly enjoy my music and am content with what I have.

Not so with writing. Some would say that achieving a PhD is pretty impressive. And I don't deny that once I realised I might be able to do that, there were times when I dreamed about having Dr in front of my name. But that was never really a motivator (thankfully - people who make much of that sort of thing come across as remarkably shallow most of the time).

And there you have some hint of my dilemma. My doctorate is functional, part of my working life, but not who I am - I did it because I was interested in the subject, not because I thought I would make money or a career out of it (though granted I would be stupid not to use it to my advancement). If I had dreamed about being a doctor, instead of getting on with the arduous task of doing research and writing a thesis, it would still be a dream, nothing more. That kind of dream has more to do with imagining what it would be like to have completed a doctorate - a pleasant fantasy with no basis in the grit of reality.

Which rather echoes my fiction writing dream. I tend to imagine what it would be like to have written a novel - and a successful one at that. And it has had (is having) the same effect on my actual writing as I describe above. I'm dreaming and not doing.

That is, of course, why I'm writing this. It's a confession of sorts, a way for me to look at myself, and it also attempts another answer to my previous journal question - what kind of writer am I?

I don't mean to say that all dreaming is a bad thing. We often use 'dream' to mean 'desire' and desiring something is generally necessary - it galvanises us, leads to some sort of effort, and to not giving up when the going gets difficult.

~mindmasher touches on this area in his comment about goal-based writing versus joy-based writing, and to an extent I have answered with my comment about how I see my music. Music, for me is very much joy-based, and I do what I want when I want. Writing, on the other hand, both fiction and academic, is something I do for more than personal gratification, and so I recognise the process to be closer to Einstein's 1 per cent inspiration, 99 per cent perspiration (I think that was Einstein, but I may be mistaken).

So I can safely say that I am a goal-based writer (and a joy-based musician). I think I'd have to disagree with 'mashers contention that goal-based writing is an inferior mode. At the same time, 'masher asks 'Does it represent joy in your life, or are you merely in love with the ideas of what a finished novel represents for a writer?' That is an important question. I disagree with Mindmasher in the separation of goal-based and joy-based writing - there can be joy, and satisfaction, in large projects - such as writing a thesis. There were moments of effortless expresssion (yes, even in academic prose) that came from a deep understanding of the subject area and the argument I was crafting. There are times that, now separated from my thesis by years, I can read some sections of it and be astonished that I wrote it. There were also times of procrastination, of doubt, and of intense frustration. All of those moments actually add considerably to the satisfaction of having overcome them and completed the thesis.

But that little question 'are you in love with the idea of what a finished novel represents..?' That requires a rather painful honesty so it is a good and penetrating question. And the answer, of course, is yes.

That doesn't have to be a bad thing. There is nothing more frustrating that abandoning a story part-way through, so the desire to have a finished novel is intense, the more so as I have finished a book-length piece of writing and derived considerable satisfaction from doing so - which makes my inability to finish a novel all the more frustrating because I know I can complete a project of that kind of length.

And that brings me to Mindmasher's final point - that I should answer the question 'why am I writing?' and work from there. I've already said that I can be goal-based. I'm writing because I want to, because I enjoy it (even when I'm frustrated and procrastinating, otherwise why would I continue?), and, in the end, because I want to be read. Unlike music (which is for me), writing is a commercial goal. I want to write something that I can enjoy writing and that others can enjoy reading, and that is of high enough quality to stand a chance of being accepted.

But as both Oliver and Mindmasher (John, isn't it?) said, I need to move beyond the dream of being a published novelist and write the story I want to write (albeit with an eye on what sells and what doesn't). Once I've completed something, then I can look at the grit of the market more closely. I'm aware that for many writers it isn't the first novel that gets published, it's the second - which often gets written more quickly because the writer has learned something in the process of writing the first one.

This strikes me as likely - since writing my thesis and, in the process, learning about research and academic writing at that level, I can now turn out 12-30k quality academic writing projects comfortably and regularly, with nothing like the procrastination and frustration of the PhD. Writing of any sort is a skill that improves with constant and consistent use. What I need is to get my head out of the dream of a writer, and get on with the task in hand.

Which, for me at this point, is mostly about crafting a sufficiently detailed plot to be sure I have a sustainable story.

Once I've got there, the intention is to write a minimum of 500 words 5 days of the week. That's roughly 10 months to write 100,000 words. At my age, 10 months is not a long time - and with my current lifestyle, 500 words 5 days a week is just about manageable. 1 year to write a full book. (Yes, I know it probably won't work like that in reality, but I agree with Oliver that it is important to keep writing regularly). I turn 39 in January 2010. I aim to have a manuscript (first draft, but complete) by my 40th birthday. That gives me six more months or so to refine the plot. And I am getting there - the plot isn't viable yet, but there is enough there to make it worth working on.

Well... there you go. That should be a long enough journal entry to put most people off!