It's and up and down life when you're trying to keep earning a living as a writer. I don't get writers' block (not so far anyway) but I am influenced by what's happening in the wider world - e.g. sadness and sometimes despair at the terrible things we do to each other - and by what's happening with my family and friends.
For example, when my mother got Alzheimers' Disease it rocked me badly and stopped me writing regularly for several years. We had always had a difficult relationship but I hoped for a time when we would finally be able to talk it all through and achieve some real understanding of each other. So when Alzheimers took away her memory of the past and her memory of who I was, it robbed us of any sort of reconciliation and left me reeling for some time.
I try to write every day and having just taken over part of an allotment, I find myself pondering ideas and work in process while I'm digging up weeds, planting, or watering. The other day, when my partner removed the large, cotton weed blanket from the area he was going to dig up, a fox leapt out and ran off. That set me off thinking about a childrens' story. While watering the greenhouse, a beautiful amber moth fluttered past me into a makeshift nest, and because amber was my mother's favourite stone, I began thinking of her and have now - two years after her death - done a first draft of a story based on her loss of memory. Maybe I should try and set up a Writers with Allotments Group...
For some time I have been thinking about setting up a set of services for aspiring writers: editing and advice on fiction, book cover design, the process of writing, that sort of thing but then there are probably too many of those out there already.
I try to write every day and having just taken over part of an allotment, I find myself pondering ideas and work in process while I'm digging up weeds, planting, or watering. The other day, when my partner removed the large, cotton weed blanket from the area he was going to dig up, a fox leapt out and ran off. That set me off thinking about a childrens' story. While watering the greenhouse, a beautiful amber moth fluttered past me into a makeshift nest, and because amber was my mother's favourite stone, I began thinking of her and have now - two years after her death - done a first draft of a story based on her loss of memory. Maybe I should try and set up a Writers with Allotments Group...
For some time I have been thinking about setting up a set of services for aspiring writers: editing and advice on fiction, book cover design, the process of writing, that sort of thing but then there are probably too many of those out there already.
What do you think? How do you keep going? What stops you writing?
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