Not exactly hitting the wall

I’ve never run a marathon or done very much running at all – I used to play sports which included running such as hockey, but I wasn’t much good at it. However I did swim long distances, and did long distance swimming races, but I never experienced what is called ‘the wall’ … defined as  ‘a condition of sudden fatigue and loss of energy which is caused by the depletion of glycogen stores in the liver and muscles’.  I’m wondering if there is a writer’s wall? I don’t mean writer’s block – and here’s another definition, a condition in which a writer loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown.

Just side-tracking to think about writer’s block, it sounds a horrific thing for a creative person – a total loss of writing muscle and an empty head… Writer’s block can be a complete lack of inspiration or new ideas, or a lack of belief in any ideas that are kicking about, an almost fear of the blank page or screen, a lack of confidence or faith in any ideas that do trickle reluctantly into the brain… It’s not just laziness and it can be frustrating, and more than frustrating for some.

I feel as if I have run out of something – I’m still writing, as you can see here! I still have plenty of ideas – I’m three-quarters way through my next Radwinter story, I still have my character Gus waiting for his story to arrive, I have 50,053 words of the story of Milla which I wrote as part of the National Novel Writing Month challenge, I still have the start of my ‘Dancing in the Road’ story about Theo and the unnamed narrator, I have my autobiographical writing… I have loads of ideas, plus a few others.

So what have I run out of? Why can’t I get on with Radwinter which I’d hoped to finish the first draft by now? I think the thing I have run out of just temporarily is time… Yes it’s a busy time of year, yes we have a houseful rather than just the two of us… Yes – that’s the thing! For various reasons we are really busy at the moment, the house is really hectic with people and things, my evenings are taken up with other activities, my early mornings are disrupted – all in a nice way, all in a family and friends way, but since finishing the fifty thousand word challenge  life has been a whirlwind! The 50,000 word challenge – I had hoped to be writing my other things while I was doing it, but that proved impossible.

So I have reasons for not writing as I usually write; it’s not just a random thing which has occurred – but it is frustrating all the same… until I remembered something I said to someone else. It’s strange isn’t it that we sometimes give advice to others, but don’t apply it to ourselves… A friend was worrying because she hadn’t been able to write anything and I said to her something along the lines of ‘just thinking about writing is almost as important‘ – and yes it is!! I’m doing lots of thinking about writing! I’m working ideas out in my head all the time – when I’m driving somewhere, or waiting for something, or lying in bed waiting for sleep, I’m thinking about my stories, thinking about the characters and what they are doing, and imagining the settings and locations!

So I haven’t hit the writing wall, here I still am, writing; I don’t have writer’s block, all I have is a lack of writing time… for the moment!!

Here is a link to things I did manage to write!!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lois+elsden