Attempts at regaining the writing saddle

Anyone who has been reading my earlier postings here and on twitter knows I have been going through a difficult patch in my writing over the past few weeks and months. When my wife had her mini-stoke earlier this year writing was irrelevant. Everything was.

Now she is recovered I have chance to pick it up again only I'm finding I'm a different person to this time last year. The novel I was writing back in December/January that is maybe three quarters done does not interest me. Maybe this is because that's what I was writing when... I don't know. All I know is try as I might that is not happening.

So I needed something else to try. And then when that failed something else...and something else...and something else again.

Being honest the only thing that has gone okay since January - at least okay enough to see my type "The End" - was another Ben Williamson novella, called Room 1B. Now this is not a bad thing as I have had the first two of these published so should the publisher (Writer's Sanctum Publishing - goo look them up) be happy enough to accept more I will be ready - I had three others already written before this so I could do handle a double release of Room 1B and Were It Was So in another six months and then again another six months later. Fingers crossed on that.

But what I needed was another project. One that would give me a chance to test my writing chops again.

Well I think I tried a little too big a goal shortly after. I had this idea for an epic science fiction story set across multiple Earths called Two Roads Diverged. This I think could be the best idea I've had in terms of fiction. The only issue is I can;t see it being told in less than 400,000 words so the 12,000 I wrote is but a drop in the ocean.

I need to be a little more realistic with getting back on track so that is shelved for a while. I do want to come back to it just not yet.

Next up I tried a bit of comedy fantasy with a fairly wide sacrilegious theme running through it. Now this I found funny to write. Only thing was I'm not sure whether it's not maybe too much into taking the mick. I've sent chapters out to a couple of test readers hoping to get a reaction. If this comes back positive I think I'll see that one trough.

But I needed something else to occupy these fingers while I waited and last weekend I had an idea for a short Gothic horror novel. I've called this one Alabaster and have the first three chapters handwritten in a notebook. This evening and probably for the rest of the bank holiday weekend I'll be turning this into electronic form and tidying it up a bit.

Anyway that's a potted history of the past few months of actual writing - or more of then not, not writing.

Let's hope this current active phase will continue and get some focus,

And in the meantime here's a spooky picture of a stone head