Recovering from Writer's Block

Hello again, after a long time.

As you may have noticed, I have been absent for nearly a whole week. Alright, I have been absent for the same amount of time before, but on those occasions, it was all down to being way too busy with the novel. This time, I have spent all those days listening to AC/DC, applying for marketing and PR roles in Brum and watching re-runs Friends on E4 while miming to nearly every word they were to say. Yes, I have seen the episodes that many times.
No, I was not being lazy. In my last blog, I mentioned forcing myself to write this week. However, as I lay down on my cosy bed with the laptop open in front of me, my mind stopped working like a bust engine. Every time I tried to force out some words, I physically could not think and my brain felt as though it was silently screaming in resistance. My mum demanded that I take a week off from writing, telling me that the reason why I am suffering from a creative drought is because I am overdoing it. Well, unfortunately for me (because it did make me look a bit silly), she was right.
To be honest, I felt a little guilty for not writing. In fact, I was beginning to feel like a fraud, because writers were supposed to love writing. When you read a brilliant novel like ‘A Clockwork Orange’ by Anthony Burgess or ‘The Edible Woman’ by Margret Attwood, you cannot help but think, “He or she has so much passion for what they do!”
However, in the past few days, writing felt like an unpleasant workout in the gym. The fact that I’m lacking the passion I should have made me think if I should even bother with his project.
Luckily, I spoke to Brighton David a few days ago. Being a former Creative Writing student like myself, he knows just as much about writing. I was relived to hear that he also has times where he is really motivated and loves writing, and other times where he hates it. There I was thinking that I must be a terrible writer to hate writing. But alas, not necessarily, for David has times where he can’t stand the thought of writing, especially when he pushes himself to write often. I think that is my problem. I have been pushing myself to write five to seven days a week that is has come to a point where I am so fatigued that even the most exciting scenes are no longer thrilling to write.
Despite my tiredness, another university friend, Nicola has encouraged me to look at the Creative Writing Exchange Group on Facebook to see if Tindal Press (or any other independent publisher) has any opportunities for us wannabees to submit short stories for their anthologies or competitions. Fortunately for us, Tindal Press is going to publish two anthologies, one for any writer and another for Asian writers. Nicola suggested that I go for the latter, for I had planned a British Asian romance novel for the ‘Novel Writing’ module. I never went back to it, for one of the characters was based on my ex and when he moved on with someone else, the project was quickly forgotten.
She threw out some ideas and I have made some quick notes on what I could do (along the lines of a Westernised rebel resisting her strict heritage). But as Nicola does not come back from Pembrokeshire until Saturday, the idea sharing will have to wait. And yes, I know some people would tell me not to juggle two projects at the same time, what with the stress. But I might be planning a month’s break from the novel, while I focus on the short story. After all, it would be nice to use this casual voice again AND it would look great on my CV.

For the mean time, I am just going to take some baby steps with this novel, writing when I feel like it. So far, I have written a very short extract…well its better than nothing.