Radio Silence
It’s been some weeks since all the excitement of my book launch, and I’m actually writing this on a quiet Sunday morning at a hillside hotel on the north side of Brisbane. I write it not knowing for sure whether I’ll be able to post it once I get home because our internet has been off the air for more than a month now, leaving me in a state of enforced 'radio silence'. We get brief moments of access followed by long periods of frustration – not good for anyone.
Our connection problems all started – we now know – with a lightning strike that blew ‘3 caps’ at the local exchange. To begin with, we thought it was at our place because we arrived home one afternoon to find one of our phone connections blasted into small pieces and spread all over the driveway.
While that was fixed pretty quickly, we continued to have problems with our phone line and the never ending dance for internet connection. After lengthy conversations (note the multiple) with a far distant tech support official (via mobile), an actual on-the-ground tech was sent to investigate… now we are waiting for parts, probably from some far flung place on the planet, and have been (not too) politely told that we will be contacted when the repairs have taken place.
The motivation to actually write my book launch report being somewhat low as a result – I usually write directly into my website app (I know, I know – not generally recommended by ten out of ten bloggers, but moving the words from one app to the other is time consuming and annoying when all the formatting has to be done again!) – means I’ve let other life priorities take over.
Sadly, this has not been progressing any of my current writing-works-(not)-in-progress – this has been progressing my back-to-school-works-in-progress.
Ce’st la vie.
Anyway, enough of the internet, or the lack thereof – definitely a first world problem.
Away Game
So, this weekend I have eschewed all school work in favour of the time away to attend a family celebration. I forgot to bring a book to read, but I did bring my snazzy new laptop, purchased with my advance for Trouble, with writing my purpose.
Before I left, I carefully loaded four current works onto a USB ready to get stuck into which ever one took my fancy ... and I’m still waiting for inspiration to strike...
...or, more to the point, trying to overcome my procrastination as to which work I should progress first. I can’t make up my mind whether this is an organisation problem or ‘writer’s block’, it being several weeks now since I let my creative side take the reins over my purely practical (and sometimes overwhelmingly long) day job to do list.
One of the themes I find repeated again and again in the whole writer’s-block-doesn’t-exist advice is to just write – anything. Hence I’ve started scribbling my blog thing, which is, as I noted, also long overdue.
I really like this away game situation. It means I can’t reach for some planning or marking or laminating.
Writing is my only default.
Must do it more often.