I’ve been having trouble restarting writing. I basically haven’t written much since January, when I finished A Fox Of Storms And Starlight, and because of last year I wasn’t in a strong enough writing habit to take essentially two months ‘off’ without it seriously impacting my habits and my critical voice.
Critical voice gets stronger the longer you go without writing, so it gets harder and harder to write fluently and without fear. Every time I think I’m making progress with it, life bops me on the nose, I have to stop writing for a bit, and ta da! Critical voice is right there in my head again, stopping me from restarting writing.
This time, it’s been the combination of world circumstances and not knowing what to work on next. I have two open series now, Storm Foxes and Kaditeos, and two others clamouring to be started as well.
And world circumstances have impacted things, though not in the way it has for a lot of creative people. I’m hearing stories of a lot of people being too stressed to create right now, and that’s pretty common. For me, though, I actually get stressed and cranky the longer I go without sustained writing. There’s something about sustained writing that calms my whirling brain, and dampens down anxiety – reading does the same, basically, but it takes more pages read than pages written to achieve the same effect – but because of schools transitioning to online learning here in Australia, the last two weeks I’ve been working really long, emotionally-draining days and haven’t had anything left over for writing – which makes me *more* stressed and the negative spiral commences.
But! It is now school holidays for two weeks. Allowing for the fact that today was a public holiday and so is the first Monday back, and that Wednesday night I was able to start writing again, I figure I have about 20 days available for something before I’m needed again in depth next term.
(And I plan to write next term too, but I also really love FINISHING writing projects, so doing something that I knew I could manage in 20 days is a real motivator to get over the critical voice and just start writing again.)
Also, when I did a writing course back at the end of January, I had to write three short stories in about six days, a total of nearly 20,000 words, and I did it, and I learned so, so much about myself and my writing, and it was great.
I have another similar course coming up in a week, so I know I have three short stories to do there…
So I decided. I’m going to do a 20-day short story challenge, aiming to complete 10 short stories in that time.
I have no preconceptions about what these stories will be, only that they will be between about 2,000 and 6,000 words, and that – because my brain got very excited about this idea the other night and wouldn’t shut up about it when I was trying to sleep – I’m going to compile them into a little anthology at the end of the month called April Showers.
Which means that all of the stories will have rain in them in some way – but other than that, who knows? I expect that they’ll be a variety of genres and tones, and I’m really looking forward to it.
I completed the first story today, a cute little contemporary romance (Look, Ma! No magic or sci fi!) called “Love In The Time Of Corona” 😀 And I’ve started the second story, too, though it doesn’t have a title yet.
I do have a cover for the collection, though:
All up, I spent two hours and thirteen minutes actually writing today (that’s actual fingers-on-keyboard drafting time, not editing or researching or planning) for a total of 5,116 words. I am super, super stoked about that.
I’ll check back in on Monday and let you know how I go over the weekend. Hopefully I should have another story finished, and the third one started by then!