Oops! Haven’t posted in quite a while. Time flies when you’re in a pandemic. Ironically, it is lockdown that somehow seemed to stifle my creativity. Most people, facing being stuck at home with time on their hands, got on with learning new skills and taking up new hobbies. For me, having all the time I needed to write became such an overwhelming thing that I struggled to actually do any. Now that I’m working again I’m berating myself for not taking advantage of that abundance of free time. The thing is though, you can’t really make yourself write. Creativity isn’t a tap you can simply turn on and off at will, it is more like a vein of gold deep under a mountain. Once you’ve mined all that gold all you can do is keep prospecting and hope to hit upon another vein. That analogy may seem like I’m saying creativity is all down to luck but, just as a grizzled prospector uses experience and intuition to look in the most promising places, a writer has ways of kick-starting their brain into producing ideas. Once I was freed from my lockdown lethargy I was able to begin poking the right areas of my brain to unlock the word mines.
That’s a fairly long-winded way of saying that I’m making progress with the sequel to The Planet Baggers, Space Hoppers. I’m currently about half way through it, and pretty happy with how it is unfolding so far. Though I’m very much a “pantser” writer I do have some general waypoints I’m roughly heading towards–plot ideas I want to incorporate without any strict route planning. I liken this approach to orienteering, a sport I loved at University (but haven’t done since!). You have a set number of points you have to visit but how you navigate between them is entirely up to you. It’s a fun sport and a fun way to write.