It’s been a little over seven months since I last posted. Within those seven months there have been some days that beat me, that took me head on and left me a groaning mess at the end. And because of these isolated incidents of universal abuse I rationalised to myself that I didn’t have to write. I could give myself the day off. I was broken, and battered, and allowed to be lazy.

But the truth is these days, these islands of hardship, were surrounded by an ocean of inactivity, where, if I’m honest with myself, a bit of productivity would have gone a long way to restoring me a little. But, as is often the case, inactivity led to even greater inactivity, until months had passed and not a word was written, which served only to deflate me further, sapping any dregs of motivation out of me and making anything that required focus and drive an impossible peak not even worth trying to surmount.

Not long ago my guilt at my own inaction reached an apex and I cracked open my laptop and started a story that had come to me in the many months before my drought of action. The story had settled into the silt of what had previously been creative juices and reawakening that part of my brain took a little coaxing. I wrote two hundred words and felt prodigious. I read those two hundred words three times over, satisfied myself that there was still a spark of writing in me, and shut the laptop lid. It was enough. No point straining something, better to ease back into it.

But, as is often the case, activity led to even greater activity. I found myself tasting the sentences of what I had written while laying in bed at night and coming up with more sentences to follow. WIth ideas and with similes. With characters and their back story. The congealed and dormant creative juices had been stirred and were starting to heat up. Even better, I was starting to wake up from the fog of justified idleness. I felt energised because I had created something and that enthusiasm could be fed back into the creative project, creating more motivation. It was sustainable energy, and it fuelled me to write.

Since then I’ve finished the story, and more importantly been satisfied with the story, and moved on to writing something a bit longer. All it took was taking that first grudging step, tapping those keys until I had one sentence, which led to wanting to write more.

And in light of that, in light of writing more and small actions leading to big results, I will endeavour to make more posts to this site, more for myself that for anyone reading.

But if you are curious, please tag along.