The Sunday Post

How’s 2017 treating you so far? I’m still dealing with a relapse of my arthritis, but every day and in every way, I’m getting better and better. My attention has been diverted from pretty much everything except surviving, though— and my writing has suffered as a result.

Imagine my dismay on reviewing last year’s creative files and noting that nothing in my “finished” folder was dated 2016! I wrote all right, but everything I worked on remains unfinished. My bones can only be responsible for the latter part of the year. What the heck happened in the first three quarters to prevent me from completing a single project?

There’s no point in rehashing time already lost. As Ragnar Lothbrok would say, “Don’t look behind you; that’s not where you are going.”

Going forward, however, I’ve given up the idea of writing on weekday evenings. It just doesn’t happen. That leaves a precious few hours over a “sometimes two, sometimes three” day weekend in which to slough off the workaday energy and get back in touch with my Muse. Sometimes she cooperates, sometimes not. Genius cannot be predicted.

All I can do is make a writing plan for the future. I can commit to this much:

First priority: whatever project I am working on (currently the tale of Caius and Aurelia, which continues to beguile).

Second priority: Comfortable Rebellion. Ter has suggested that I limit myself to one post per week. Keeping up with more than that has proven a challenge for both me, the writer, and her, the reader. (Okay, one of my readers, but she has a point when she says she gets boggled when she does check in and finds half a dozen pieces awaiting her equally precious downtime.) so we came up with the idea of “The Sunday Post”, a commitment I can keep—I think—by scheduling my writing hours accordingly.

Third priority: writing exercises. I’m not done with “Diva”, and I’ve collected a few photographs that inspired me to ask the question, “What, who, where, when and why?” (or is that five questions?) It’s encouraging to feel that spark of curiosity again, and my fourth priority falls in line with the third:

Make time for the Muse on a workday. I may not manage a full blown “artist date”, but surely I  can devote one lunchbreak per week to tea and a half-hour of scribbling. Whether a two-bite piece of fiction or next Sunday’s post emerges in that time makes no difference; I just want to reconnect with my imagination, to gain a little momentum for the weekend, and to remind myself of what’s really real ... ’cause a lot in my life of late isn’t.

With love,