For lots of reasons I won’t go into, 2021 was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad year in my household. No covid (knock wood), but lots of other health issues and hospitalizations and general fuckery. At the moment it appears things are on an upswing, but I crashed. Hard.
Needless to say, writing came to a screeching halt. I did nothing other than work, crochet, and attempt to feed my wife things that won’t exacerbate her health stuff.
But the other day, I was working and I kept getting little snippets of scenes, so I took some time after work and wrote. 4k words, just like that.
The problem, if you can call it a problem, is that my brain is flipping between three genres at the same time. I’m starting to wonder if I don’t need to just … let it do that, show up to whichever genre it’s excited about today, and sort it all out later.
My boss gave me a gift card to B&N for the holidays, and I used it to buy pretty, pretty reference books for the 20s. The 1920s, since I guess we need to start specifying. And by happenstance, I ran across a twitter thread about the news story from the early 20th century that inspired the mystery I’m writing. It sparked things.
I know enough not to assume that just because I’m feeling a little better, this is sustainable. That’s not how life or my body works. But I am trying to reconnect with a writing practice and some other things to help ground me. ‘Tis the damn season, right?