Filling the well

During the first two lockdowns I continued to write as normal.  I was not working on new ideas, though.  The first two lockdowns were occupied with a rewrite of my riddle quest novel.  I didn’t have to discover that story from scratch, I had it there in the previous draft.  The rewrite was about deepening the characters, and about describing the details of the settings properly.

During the third lockdown I started on the re-write of a very old novel.  I wanted to re-use the settings which I’d created in great detail and I wanted to re-use the basic storyline too.  My rewrite of this book was going fine in lockdown too.  I was even adding threads to my chapter plan as I wrote, sharpening up the motivation for the various pieces of sabotage.

So far, so good, but I’ve also made a commitment to bulk submitting short stories this year, and that’s where the problems started.  I’m running out of stories to submit.  The ones I believe in have been around for a while, and they’ve been submitted at least a dozen times each.  I’m having trouble finding new markets to send some of them too.  So I need to write some new stories and I’m finding that my creative well has run dry.

I went through the instant writing exercises I’d done at Havant Writers Circle, searching for stories.  The ones I produced in 2017, before all this crap started, had some good ideas, and I’ve written half a dozen of them into flash fiction pieces.  I’ve decided to focus on writing short shorts, because they get written quickly, and can be edited quickly and sent out.  But having come to the end of my instant writing exercises, I’m running out of ideas.

When I reach for new ideas, I’m finding that the well has run dry. The third lockdown was hard for me, and I’ve come out of it grumpy and feeling very dull.  I haven’t had contact with some of the writers I usually see every month for the best part of a year.  Even the Zoom events we were doing have tailed off.

I really need to meet up with other writers again, especially my T’Articulation spoken word group.  Hearing other people’s work there often sparks ideas for my own stories and the themes for the evening focus my mind and force me to write new work.

Hopefully, this time the country will stay open and I can start meeting up with people again.  I desperately need that to refill my creative well.