Novel Shmovel

A list of all the reasons why I can't write

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

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