AWOL

Apologies. I've been gone a while. With various boring health issues over the last few months, I fear one of the casualties has been my writing gene. It seems to have gotten up one day, walked off, never to be seen again. Missing, gone for good... AWOL.

I've tried. Really. I've sat at the computer, opened the notebooks, tried smiling at them both over a steaming cup of green tea - good for the brain cells, you see. I've even held a pencil in my hand with an A4  notepad. Longhand works for a lot of people. Alas, I'm not one of them.

I've blamed the painkillers. And yes, while they have definitely affected my cognitive power, I'm not willing to use that excuse anymore. The plain and simple fact remains that if I want to write, I have to write, even if it means copying out recipes. A a result of this cunning plan, executed over the last week, I can now recite Jaime Oliver's recipe for simple baked lasagne off by heart, like times tables. It's got pork belly and cinnamon in it - who knew?!

Today, I wrote a poem. It's not good enough to put here and it was only four lines. It didn't rhyme, but it had a beginning and an end. I'll work on the middle tomorrow. Slowly, slowly, bite size chunks.

I'm hoping this is an evolutionary process and someday soon, I'll be back working on another novel. With this in mind, I've booked myself into a writer's retreat with the idea of kick starting  the non recipe writing. It'll kill or cure me. The gene will return or not.
Meantime, I've promised myself one thing. If I can actually write properly again, I'm going to do it for me. I'm going to enjoy it again, which means I'm not going to think about agents or publishers. I'm just going to tell a story. Who knows? Watch this space...