I have a confession to  make. Over the past six months I have struggled to write. I have some excuses – a time consuming day job, a relocation, growing kids, living apart from my beloved during the week – the list goes on. But in spite of all this, I’ve managed to still watch TV, play games, go for walks – lots of things that are ostensibly less important to me than writing. It’s as if the busyness has become an excuse for my not writing rather than a reason, in a strange case of writers’ block which has no simple explanation.

The good news – and perhaps the reason I’m prepared to admit this now – is that I’m writing again. Last week I finished up at my day-job, determined to find the time to write I so desperately missed. And having made that decision I realised I had to make sure right from the outset that I actually write. In fact, before I’d even worked my last day, the impulse to write started to return. New ideas, new snippets, even whole poems and one (rough) first draft of a picture book. And on Monday, my first official day sans-dayjob, I sat down and wrote. I dd the same yesterday and plan to do it again tomorrow.

On day one I didn’t know what I would write, but that didn’t stop me. I closed my Internet browser, and my email, opened a blank document and started writing. 800 words later I had a story of sorts forming from a kind of free-writing exercise. I saved and printed this rough story-thing, then went on with the rest of my day. But the character and his story stayed with me and by Tuesday when I sat down again, I had a new scene to write, taking that story in a whole new direction.  And by today, another new scene. Pete – my new character – seems determined that I tease out his story, and I am content to just write it and see where it takes me. If nothing else, this is the story that has brought me back to my desk.  

I’m delighted to be back in the crazy and crazed world of the writer.