Does Absence Make the Heart Grow Fonder (of writing)?
Having neglected my blog for several months, I finally wrote
the draft of a blog post back in December all about how I had been reconnecting
with a ms I originally wrote a few years ago. I was all fired up, having
removed redundant plots and re-plotted something more age appropriate. I wrote
about how I’d pinned up a huge piece of card on the wall and made meaningful
annotations to the story arc. But I never posted it. I think because at that
exact time, outside circumstances stepped in and took away all desire I had for
writing anything, let alone a full length novel.
I filled my time around dealing with the external stuff by
teaching some adult creative writing classes that gave me a real buzz seeing people
who were new to writing or had not written anything focussed for years blossom.
It let me still see myself as a writer although I wasn’t actually writing, just
facilitating others’ creativity.
I even thought for a while that I didn’t want to write
anymore. That I wasn’t capable of producing anything people would want to read.
That I didn’t love it enough, there were better things I could do with my time
and really, what was the point?
But then, a few weeks ago, I got a new idea for a previously
abandoned story. And then I got another. I jotted the ideas down and, as so
often happens, one spark of creativity ignited several more. Last weekend I sat
down and typed up all the new ideas, had a fresh look at the story arc and
wrote a fairly comprehensive outline. Although I had stopped wanting to write
for a while, the need to write hadn’t gone away for good. I was in love again
with my story and the prospect of writing it.
The circumstances that forced me into a writing wasteland in
December are still there but I’m not using them as an excuse anymore. Writers
write in whatever snatches of time they can grab. I don’t know how long it will
take me to write the whole ms virtually from scratch, or if it will be any good
when I do, but I’m now writing it for me, because I want to and because, as I
tell my students, there is so much to be gained from the writing process, no
matter what the outcome.
Lorraine, it's totally normal to not want to write sometimes, especially if something happens to draw all your attention. That happened to me when my dad died in October 2017. I had to give myself permission to not write and not try to write and not feel guilty that I wasn't doing either. I've written sporadically this year but still not back to it yet, but it's coming, slowly. Glad you got freshly inspired to by fresh ideas.
ReplyDeleteThank you. So glad you’re managing to write again too.
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