The Ubiquitous Covid Post

I suspect most authors have put forward a post regarding their activities during Covid, but I have not. It certainly was not due to any prudishness on my part to join the throng discussing the challenges or perhaps the fortuitousness of the opportunity lockdown offered them. No, my reason are far more simple in the end,

I just didn't feel like writing.   

For me, Covid began as that fortuitous opportunity - lockdown gave me time and motivation to finish a book project, give it a hard edit, and in that first couple of months, hand it off to my editor (who is also my wife) who was also like myself, stuck at home. A less than enthusiastic first read put that draft back into the WIP stage, where it still remains. 

After that, writing, and enthusiasm for writing dried up, and I grew bored of the monotony and lack of overall stimulation. So I took up a new hobby.

​This!

This gave me a new passion, and a reason to go outside and exercise even more than hiking and kayaking did (I had been kayaking, but an accident that left my hand in stitches and badly sprained stopped that for quite a while). Mountain biking was my new go to for maintaining sanity in a world that had gone insane. Certainly I plugged away at another WIP, but it was mere pecking really. Add a few new paragraphs, edit, rewrite, maybe a couple more new paragraphs, but nothing substantial. Spring turned to summer, and riding and being outside in the forest continued to get me through the pandemic. 

I finally felt a bit of motivation to write in year two, and successfully completed NANOWRIMO 2021 with a novella that was a stand along story, but also part of a contemporary fantasy anthology I am working on. 

And then it ended.

I dabbled a bit on the other WIP without much success, continued to ride in much of my spare time, and focused on work. I certainly don't begrudge that change in focus, because I believe it got me through the challenges of Covid and to be honest, kept me in the same size of kilts I normally where, but I have missed it all quite a lot. The stories continue to percolate in my head, and I can't deny the simmering frustration of not moving them to print. Even marketing dried up and sales of course followed. A Covid malaise enveloped me that only now, do i feel that I may be coming out of - case in point, my first post Covid blog, written ironically I suppose as I finish the last vestiges of Covid which I finally caught nearly three years on. 

So here I sit, tapping on a keyboard, musing about where to go next. Tidying up my office is the first step. Resurrecting a stalled writing career is the next. 

​See you soon!