Looking at the infrequency of my posts here and on Facebook, it’s probably no surprise that I’ve been going through a bit of a creative crisis the last six months. After finishing writing ‘The Mature Man’s Guide to Surviving Change’ last spring, I kind of crashed. There were a number of factors at play. My day job suddenly required a lot more of my attention, and after five years publishing I felt I was at a crossroads. I lost the joy. The days when I’d ask myself “Why am I doing this?” became more and more frequent. With publishers closing, readers not wanting to pay for quality work, a genre that seems to churn out hundreds of titles a month and from which I felt increasingly separated, spending what little free time I had writing seemed pointless when I could be doing so many other things.

But this is what I think separates writers who write out of love from writers who write to get rich—we can’t stop. Characters, stories are part of us, and we’re lost when they go silent. At least I know I am. Even in the face of futility, we persevere.

So it’s only recently, as in the last couple of weeks, that I’ve begun writing again. I dusted off the story I began last summer and am slowly pounding away at it. It feels a bit like coming home, but at the same time, I’m wary. Things have changed, or I have changed. Some weeks I’ve only managed two thousand words, and if I have a taxing day at work, I don’t feel guilty about vegging on the couch rather than sitting at the keyboard. I’m happy saying it’ll be done when it’s done. For now I’m going back to where I started: writing for me, at my pace, without worrying about sales, or competition, or where I fit in the genre.