What do you fear? That is a rather serious question for me to ask since I tend toward the humorous side of things, at least in my writings (novels, blogs, etc.). Even in my murder mystery, Murder in Minnesota, I went light on the gruesome, and dwelled as much as possible, on the humor resident in the characters. But it has been a bit hard to avoid the fearful side of life these past two-years.
With everyone being pretty much addicted to technology that can assault all of us with a daily dose of gloom and doom, it is easy to see why. For me, someone who tends to doubt what doesn’t seem logical or reasonable, watching the impact of fear run amuck slowly became untenable. In the end, it had an overwhelming impact on my writing.
Struggling with the insanity going on around me, my opinion and not necessarily that of the masses, my creative writing ground to a halt. I was over 200 pages into my second mystery in the Wondering Woodie series when I stopped. And work on the third book in the planned quartet based on my mother’s life ground to a halt at chapter six.
When the panic over the “pandemic” not only persisted but intensified, especially in California, I began to ignore writing anything beyond emails and texts. At that point, it became imperative to do something dramatic. By the end of July, Sarah and I escaped California for the Midwest we both had grown-up in and always missed.
Landing in Ohio helped my attitude greatly but ironically further delayed my efforts to get back to unfinished works. I spent the better part of the next year overseeing a major remodel of the house we bought including the addition of a wonderful front porch. Due to supply and labor shortages the cost went up as the progress went down. Thankfully, we were able to entertain periodic guests and regularly interact with neighbors in the old, normal way.
By the time the remodel was complete, inertia had taken over. My ability to discipline myself like I once did was gone. I used to be up at 5:30 to write for a couple of hours before Sarah woke. Now, I was lucky to crawl out of bed at eight. As for writing, I found tons of ways to procrastinate long enough for the day to be wasted.
Then Cooper, our Labradoodle arrived. Since then, I’m rising earlier to walk him and beginning to gain enthusiasm for writing. All the blog post on www.GLGooding.com are proof of that. Unfortunately, so much time had lapsed since my last serious writing stint on the works mentioned above, that I am having to read what I’d written, before moving forward.
The good news is it appears I am back in the author business. I am eager to finish these two works and start on a couple other ideas this year.
Reflecting on my nearly two years of stagnation, I would not label what I experienced as writer’s block. It was not the lack of ideas to complete or start new works. It was a state of mind generated by the world around me and my focus on that. So, let’s just say I was suffering writer’s block-head.