I’ve been off writing for a while now, which has been discouraging. Several times a week I say to myself, “I feel like writing,” but I don’t actually want to be involved in the physical act of bashing out a story. I want to feel like I feel when I’m writing, but I don’t want to write. (Does that make sense? I think it does.)

I believe that it has a lot to do with the amount of output I produced over the last twelve months, which is staggering when I look back on it. I’ve pinned down a couple of reasons which explain the reluctance to sit down and re-engage, and they all make sense — as mentioned earlier, my unintentional end-of-novel move in The Great Canadian Novel pretty much sent the “done” signal to my brain, and I’ve had an anti-computer kick going on as well — but overall, I think I just needed a break.

I’ve been mutinously reluctant to open my laptop again, so I did what I used to do: I went out and bought a new notebook with lovely smooth pages, and a new fine black ballpoint pen. I sat down with my lovely wooden lap desk that Ceri bought me three months ago, and did what I’ve been telling her to do all summer… I just started writing. And yes, the first words were “I don’t want to write”, followed closely by “none of my stories interest me”, and “maybe I should do this”, then by “or hey, yeah that” — and bang, all of a sudden there were 1,200 words of the lapsed Trinity dream story, which has acquired a working title of Crossroad.

So. I’m feeling much better about things. I even made notes on what can come next when I return to it.

Ladies, gentlemen and honoured others: she’s back.