ARE YOU GOING THROUGH A WRITING SLUMP? BY SANDRA HARRIS.
ARE YOU GOING THROUGH A WRITING SLUMP?
BY SANDRA
HARRIS. ©
I’ve found myself writing a lot less lately and that’s
unusual, as anyone who knows me well, even just from online, can confirm. I
used to write nearly every day, opinion pieces, film reviews,
works-in-progress, like novels and novellas, etcetera.
I haven’t stopped writing altogether; I don’t think I could
ever do that. But this year I’ve been writing a lot less, and I thought it
might be helpful, not just to me but also to other writers, to explore some of
the reasons why.
It’s not so much a writer’s block, in which you have
no idea what to write about next, it’s more of a writing slump in which
I just don’t feel like writing much at the moment. Or, rather, I want
to write, but the flesh is unwilling and the mind is weak too, lol.
I’ve been writing consistently since 2009. I reached a milestone birthday and decided that, if I was going to be a writer as I’d always intended to be, I’d damn well better get a move on. I started small, then began to self-publish on Kindle Direct Publishing. I then ended up getting a three-book-deal with a traditional publisher in 2019.
The books were romantic/women’s fiction, and they came out in
the spring of 2020, 2021 and 2022 respectively. They didn’t achieve anything particularly
seismic in the publishing industry, especially the first one which debuted in
the second month of the coronavirus pandemic, not really a great time to debut
anything, unless it was a recipe for banana bread or a workout you could do at
home between homeschooling the kids and shopping online…!
Since then, I’ve published one book of short stories, one
book of weird flash fiction stories and one novella, The Memoir-Writing
Class, on KDP. I’m very tired now. Maybe that’s why I’m writing less than
usual for the last year or so. It was pretty intense there for a while, so
maybe I’m just tired. Maybe it’s just as simple as that.
I do remember telling a fellow writer at one point
that I felt burned out. So maybe it’s that. I worked very hard for a long
period of time and maybe it just plain wore me out and now I need some down
time, who knows?
I know I’ve also been very distracted this year, for a couple
of reasons. One, my daughter and I have become involved with a flock of pigeons
who visit the balcony of our city-centre flat daily. We’ve got to know them on
a personal level and have given them names and birdseed and clean water, and we’ve
been here for them in all weathers since the start of the summer.
My daughter said recently that we are ‘part of the flock’ now,
and that’s why they continue to come here. She said they trust us and know that
we’re ‘good people.’ I was ridiculously happy to hear her say this. There’s
something about being a person of importance to an animal or in an animal’s life
that gives you such a great feeling of being wanted-slash-needed. I’m
definitely a bird-lover for life now after this summer.
The second thing by which I’ve been severely distracted this year,
believe it or not, is Twitter. (I refuse to call it X.) Distracted by
social media? Well, I never…! Whoever heard of such an outlandish thing? I
joined it in 2014, but for years I only used it as a place to post links to my
writing or my published works.
Then, last winter, we had a general election here in Ireland
in which I was very interested. When I accidentally discovered- I can’t
remember how it actually happened- that people use Twitter as a way of
commenting on politics and politicians and current affairs, I began to spend
much more time there.
It’s been a year of political awakening for me. Twitter is
the place where people post about real news events that the mainstream media,
or MSM, doesn’t comment on for some reason. I’ve learned so much in one short
year about the world around me and about my own country that I’d never have
known if it hadn’t been for Twitter.
People call Twitter ‘toxic,’ but all I see there are
decent Irish (and English or American!) men and women who are worried
about what’s going on in the world at the moment and want to talk about it with
like-minded people.
Though I don’t take an active part and usually prefer just to
watch and learn stuff, I’ve enjoyed the sense of community I’ve discovered there
and can happily while away several hours scrolling through the endless posts.
That has obviously been extremely detrimental to my writing, lol. I’m
not gonna lie, or NGL, as my cool kids would say. Social media scrolling is the
kiss of death to a writing career…
Anyway, I try to do creative things like reading in lieu of
actually writing. I do still read voraciously every day, mostly at
night before going to bed. The book I’m reading at the moment is called The
Tenant, and it’s a sinister mystery written by Roland Topor, the French
cartoonist, illustrator and actor who played the giggly, unhinged Renfield in Nosferatu:
Phantom der Nacht, Werner Herzog’s magnificent 1979 movie version of Dracula.
I also keep a diary and write in it every day. The art of
physical writing with a pen and notebook keeps me grounded and is as necessary to
my well-being as breathing. Even a bad day can lose its power after you’ve
written about it.
So, will I get back to writing as much as I used to? I can’t
really say at this point. I have some health-related stuff hanging over me at
the moment that is making it nearly impossible for me to concentrate on my
work-in-progress, the fourth book in my Thirteen Stops trilogy(!), which
is written, thank God, but needs editing.
I feel guilty all the time for not writing as much as I feel
I ‘should,’ and there are plenty of people out there who tell you that a
‘real’ writer writes every day, no matter what. If you can manage to do
that, great, but sometimes, when life is ‘life-ing’ really hard, it’s just not
possible.
I’m trying not to beat myself up about it too much. When
things get back to something resembling ‘normal,’ I’ll hopefully write a bit
more. But, for the moment, it’s just not happening for me.
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