For six years, from the summer of 2010 to the summer of 2016, my creative output was like a geyser; I had no trouble producing hundreds of new essays a year, including a new short story every month. But then life intervened, and sapped my creative energy so that it became harder to think of new nonfiction and much harder to think of new fiction; even semi-retirement did not bring back that old energy. But then in January of last year I started a new solo D&D game for Grace, and it seemed to free up some long-idle creative gears which had rusted through disuse. Of course, my brain being what it is, I had to look over a bunch of old materials and decide that they all needed to be revised, updated, or added to; for the first time since I started this blog, I started taking a little time for myself every week to work on my game world; that was what inspired me to write this essay a year ago. But I’ve finally finished most of what I’ve needed to finish, and I’m working on turning my enormous Doctor Who review project into a book as I’ve planned for three years. Then a couple of weeks ago, on the second day of summer, a new story came to me; by the time y’all read this I may have even started writing it. And though most of y’all will have to wait until the long-delayed publication of Lost Angels to see it, my subscribers can read it now (as soon as I’m done with it, that is) as a “thank you” for all your unflagging support. So if you’re a subscriber or frequent gift-sender, and would like to read the story, shoot me an email and I’ll get a PDF copy out to you; it might even inspire me to stop procrastinating and get it done!
Unblocked
July 15, 2024 by Maggie McNeill
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I’m so happy for you, that you’ve gotten the “juices flowing” again, as it were. I’ve been in a funk like that for at least 3-4 years now, ever since my neck got so bad that sitting up and typing became a real challenge. The spinal surgery last year did eventually help with it, but not as much as I’d like, and I think the damage had already been done. I feel like I’ve barely written anything at all in the last few years.
Though bizarrely I managed to take a story idea from spark to completion in a few hours last night, and published for the first time on my Medium in a long while. I also read some recent comments on my most popular Literotica story last week, saying how much they’d love to read a sequel about the characters as they would be today, nearly 20 years after I’d originally published it. And I almost immediately had a really interesting idea for a sequel – but it doesn’t mean I’ve managed to commit a single word to paper/cloud yet.
I hope the uptrend for your creativity spark continues. I’m very curious about the Doctor Who project. I’ve done live-tweeting of some of my favorite films, back in my early Twitter days. And while we’ve never gone back to the legacy shows, sis and I only became true die-hard Whovians a few years ago, beginning our binging of the 2005-present episodes around 2019. Before that I had watched Torchwood a few years earlier, and we’d both seen legacy episodes on PBS as kids. Now we chase new episodes with unleashed, webisodes, games, you name it. We recently started on The Sarah Jane Adventures, because we were still jonesing for more Whoniverse content after Ncuti’s first season ended brilliantly. I would absolutely be curious to read a book based on your own DW catchup experience. 🙂