Finding my mojo

 

Writing can be an up and down business. I don't really believe in writer's block as such. It's more to do with how you feel, and I certainly don't worry about it. If I'm writing and I get stuck, I'll walk away for a while, maybe move to a different form of writing, like poetry if I'm struggling with fiction, or vice versa. Otherwise I might just leave writing for a while and spend more time reading or doing something else. Eventually something will spark me back to writing again.

I've spent the best part of this year so far on my new novella. Work has been intense since having an editor critique for me. Lots of cut and paste, moving timelines and extra scenes followed before two read-throughs - one on the laptop, the other from a printout of my manuscript. Those edits then had to be fed back into my file copy. I was beginning to find myself separating from the work. I'd read it so many times I was falling out of love with it and I could no longer judge my own writing. I pushed myself to get the edits into my file copy earlier this week, and then couldn't resist a tinker to the ending! Finally, I have sent out my manuscript to a couple of friends for feedback. It's a weight off me.

Free of all that work, what was I to do now? I have lots of work on my laptop that needs editing, stuff I've not looked at in years. There's also a work I started last year (or was it the year before), which I'd mislaid somewhere on my laptop and then found again. I could go back to that. Submissions have plummeted to a record low this year, maybe I should see what I had and which submission windows were open.

It is the latter I did. I went into my flash fiction file and took a look at a few stories I'd written. With some editing I improved them (hopefully). I ended up sending out to three publications, which involved two flash fictions and three poems. It felt good. 

Maybe it was the act of spending so much time on one manuscript that was wearing me down. I felt unproductive, as I had nothing to show for it. That isn't true of course, as I was working really hard. I was just conscious that I wasn't really waiting on subs as there was nothing now to wait on, and it was going to take months before the novella made anymore headway.

I was feeling that I'd lost my mojo, especially as I was struggling to keep positive about the novella. It was time to try other things. One of things was attending a crime writing workshop on Saturday morning in Wimbledon Library. It was good to be around writers again, and the workshop was interesting. Run by two local authors crime writers, Joy Kluver and Biba Pearce, there was an introduction of the type of crime novels one could write from procedural to cosy crime and all else in between. We had go at writing a first scene, then split into two groups with a tutor and shared our writing or notes. There were two further exercises about characters and setting and lots of advice. I think there will be follow up workshops in the future. 

While I enjoyed the workshop, I'm still not sure crime writing is for me, though I love reading it. I do have one crime novel written during a frantic NaNoWriMo event some years ago, but I've not been back to it, and I would need expert advice on some police stuff (I mainly Googled it!). Sometimes I write around the edges of crime, but never full-on crime with all the police procedural stuff. However, I love forensics to the point when I see a police forensics van pass by I get all excited, and I've read quite a few books on the subject. However, I never dismiss the idea of writing any genre.

The the other thing that helped me find my writing mojo was reading the latest copy of Mslexia magazine. I enjoyed an article about indie authors and as always I went to the back pages to see which submission windows are open. This was also helped by the email I received from Robin Houghton with a list of poetry publication deadlines for June. Sometimes things just come together. Hence the submissions already mentioned.

I didn't think I'd be submitting anything this month apart from my poem to Visual Verse, so when I found it had been published I took that as a 100% success rate for the month. I'm going to have change those statistics now. My poem Curtain Call is based on a photo on the website of a cat.

What next? I don't know yet, but at least I've found the excitement in writing again and that's what it's all about.