I haven’t touched my novel in ten months. Ten months! The last time I opened my manuscript and typed words was on March 22nd, 2023. I started writing the novel in September 2022. It was going well. I was motivated. I wasn’t too hard on myself. I trusted the process and accepted that I was writing shit. I wrote 75% of it. Then one day I couldn’t write anymore. Poof! My motivation disappeared like all my savings since moving to London.
Sitting down and working on the last 25% feels like the most unbearable, impossible, overwhelming thing in the world (apart from cooking supper every day and taking a shower… am I depressed?).
Here’s why I haven’t touched my novel in almost a year and can’t seem to find the strength to return to it:
I was tired
I don’t know how the story ends (murder? divorce? culty orgi? all’s well and lessons are learned?)
I was working on my newsletter (which I love of course)
I spent weeks working on a writing residency application (didn’t get it)
Then I had a panic attack that kept me in bed for days
So I got into cranial sacral therapy
Which helped deliver a message from my body: “Your legs will carry you. You’re not weak. Keep going.”
I enrolled in a screenwriting competition
Then it was summer, my kid was off school and refused to go to camp
I moved to London
I was busy settling into life in London
A rat chewed on wires above the ceiling and severed the lighting circuit in my flat, making it impossible to write in the dark
I was mad about the rat
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