The Seven Deadly Sins – Sloth

The fourth of our Seven Deadly Sins series comes from Rachael Lucas who considers sloth or, as she describes it, the fine art of doing nothing.   Rachael lives by the sea in the North West of England with her partner -who is also a writer – her four children, and an assortment of animals. She writes contemporary women’s fiction and for young adults. Her first novel, Sealed with a Kiss, was published in 2013 and she’s currently working on her fifth. 

 

Seven Deadly Sins -Sloth

 (or: the fine art of doing nothing)

 It looks awfully like laziness, I know.

You see us sitting in cafes, pen tapping absently on the table, staring out of the window, lost to the world. We sit there for hours, nursing a coffee long after the cup is empty. Sometimes we might scribble something in a notebook, if you’re lucky.

Sometimes you catch us on social media, chatting away in the middle of the working day, sharing jokes and having fun when the rest of the world is working. And it looks like we’re wasting time.

We catch up on box sets on television and lie on the sofa wrapped in blankets, a glass of wine in hand. It’s the definition of sloth, isn’t it?

But there’s a method in our madness.

For all the caffeine-fuelled nights when we’re typing madly to get something handed in on deadline, and the days when we sweat over the edits, trying to make sense of a story we’ve got in our head but can’t tame on paper, there have to be the lazy days. The days when we stare and daydream, eavesdrop on conversations, or stare at the television until we’re part sofa, part human.

They’re the days when the stories creep in, and the ideas start to grow. Tiny snippets of conversation which grow into a “…what if?” which becomes a scribble in a notebook. And one day, that scribble in a notebook becomes a fully grown novel on a bookshop shelf.

So the next time you catch an author tweeting in the middle of the day, gazing into the middle distance in a coffee shop, or regaling you with the plot of the latest detective drama on tv, remember this. It might look like they’re doing nothing, but they might well be hatching the beginnings of a brand new book.

It’s not sloth, you see. It’s creativity.

Honestly.

(You can have that excuse on us.)

Rachael’s latest novel, Wildflower Bay, will be released in three parts as an ebook exclusive before being published by Pan Macmillan on the 11^th August.

Download part one for free here: http://bit.ly/wildflowerone

 

You can find Rachael being creative (ahem) in the following places.

Website http://rachaellucas.com

Twitter  http://twitter.com/karamina

Facebook http://facebook.com/rachaellucaswriter

Pinterest http://pinterest.com/rachaellucas1

Instagram http://instagram.com/rachaellucas