For five long months I was tortured.  I was in the midst of educational philosophy and the amount of brain power it took to read and more,  actually comprehend  what I was reading  for my university studies severely limited the amount of free time I had to dedicate to writing. In January I was able to concentrate on writing for a solid two hour block when Bronwen was at school. But the amount of work that came with my university course meant that for the last seven weeks I basically had to give up any and all creative writing and work solely on my mini thesis. In fact, I promised my Life Make Over group that I wouldn’t touch any creative work because I was finding it all too stressful to try and do it all. But I would look longingly at the spiral books that I enjoy writing by hand in and moan to anyone who would listen that I couldn’t wait to get back to my fiction writing.

Well get this. I finished the course last week.  For the last seven days I have been free of the academic writing and I am struggling to get back into the swing of creative writing.  I now lack the quiet spirit that I had cultivated last year and the idea of sitting for two hours and churning out 1000 words fills me fear and a certain awe; I used to do that five days a week?  There are just too many distractions right now. The house has gone to pot whilst I was buried in my books, so I could spend every day for a month cleaning. My daughter has been gifted with bags of clothing that needs a permanent home, resulting in my needing to weed out the clothing too small to make room for the new, meaning I’m  going down memory lane with every single item of clothing I’m having to put away. Having read so much educational stuff  over the past five months, there is now a pile of books from the library >this big< that I want to lose myself in.   And the World Cup has started.

So I remind myself that it was a scant week ago that I sent my work in. That seven days after five months of hard slog isn’t so very much. But I really ache to get back to my writing. Of churning out 1000 words a day.  Of the ‘muse’ returning and the words flowing easily.  Maybe I can fool my brain into thinking creatively rather than academically by writing this blog post.  That or I’m going to have to get strict and force myself to write a smaller amount (500?) of words growing to larger numbers and simply train my head to get back into the swing of things.

I forsee hard work ahead.