Though I physically recovered from the plague a while ago, it took me an extra week to get my fiction brain back. I was writing non-fiction, and I did write the presentation that I am giving today. https://www.facebook.com/groups/171989563258/permalink/10158330796258259/

But the words weren’t easy. There is a definite difference between writing and the words flowing and just picking at it, one piece at a time.

Of course, I worry every time that happens. I worry that I’ve lost my mojo, that the words are never coming back, that it’s never going to be easy to write again.

Fortunately, I’ve been through this often enough (like, every month, right around the time my period shows up) that I know those are just fears. The words have always come back.

I was thinking this morning about the two years or so when I wasn’t writing, back in 2006-2007. I had gone through a number of serious life rolls and there just weren’t any words.

I didn’t have writer’s block. It wasn’t that I wanted to write and I couldn’t. I just had no words.

So I did other things. I painted. I made quilts. I kept making art, just not writing.

When I noticed that the words were starting to percolate, I decided I needed to “prime the pump” as it were.

I got a book by Judy Reeves – “A Writer’s Book of Days.” It had a writing prompt for every day of a year. I started writing 15 minutes a day, every day. Some of those days I quit when my time was up. But frequently, I would keep writing. I ended up with a series of short stories that didn’t quite work. But that was okay. I was practicing.

It wasn’t until I hit on a prompt that made me write, and keep writing, that I felt as though I was back in the swing of things. That prompt made me write a dark, epic fantasy trilogy that will never see the light of day. (I did eventually take those initial ideas and wrote a single book, called, “The Harps of the Six Kingdoms.” (Https://www.knottedroadpress.com/book/the-harps-of-the-six-kingdoms/)

This morning, I’m blogging, then I’m doing more edits. Tomorrow, I will get back into the novel, probably taking a day or so to read through it before I get to the actual writing.

I am dismayed at what this has done to my word count numbers for the year. Can’t be helped, though. This might just be a low word count year for me.

I won’t finish the current novel until May sometime. Then…we’ll see what I’m working on next. Hopefully another novel.

So what have you been doing to keep yourself motivated? To moving forward with your art?