You may have noticed I haven’t stopped by this blog for a lil’ while. Sometimes life does get in the way of writing, no matter how hard you try to stop it, and that’s sure what happened this year. While I’ve kept up my paid blogging more-or-less, finding the mental space and the physical time to be creative hasn’t quite been there, for a bunch of now-not-so-important reasons that I might go into later.

What I find interesting, and wanted to share today, is the process of how the need and urge to write (creatively) comes back, or at least how it came back for me. There was no watershed moment, it really trickled back one little bit at a time. First, I found myself looking back at old blog posts, and checking that my log-ins still worked (and re-setting all my forgotten passwords in the process).

Then I started reading more, after slowing my usual crazy rate of getting through books. I also found myself re-reading some of the books I’ve always found most beautiful, like Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, with incredible, eloquent prose that simultaneously makes me jealous, and makes me want to get writing again. I started up writing freelance travel articles again – the kind where I get to be creative, and not have to make a point in the space of a short blog post – and have started posting at my Not A Ballerina blog again. In early morning classes, before any of my students arrived, I started stealing time to make notes about the next novel I want to write. And thus, the inevitable conclusion to this process was to start blogging again here at Becoming A Fiction Writer. Welcome back, me!

I have lots of plans for posts and topics over the next few months, and I look forward to connecting with old and new blogging and writing friends. I’ve got so much to tell you – my experiences with a literary agent, my ideas and plans for new novels, and hopefully, my journey as I try to write more of everything, and hopefully, finally get something written by me onto a shelf in a bookshop.

PS: Inspirational (for me, anyway) landscape is from our mid-year trip to the Flinders Ranges, South Australia.