Everything moved towards this in April.

Most of this month was spent ‘brain-storming’…

When you think that nothing you do matters, then, as they say, the only thing that you do matters.

Do I still want to be a Writer?

That is a kind of ‘I am writing’, so I must want to… The problem is that too much ‘wanting’ to crushes the ability to travel into story worlds.

I have used art practise to move around all kinds of mental blocks for a couple of years, and the end of March ’23 has proved the worth of that again; my Mum has hit a crisis with her dementia and is in the local hospital as I write this. Unfortunately, I had just decided to challenge myself to finish a story I started pre ‘Open House Surgery’ during Camp Nanno this year.

If you ring and speak to someone or visit that hospital to see a loved one, you can process what is happening. But, at the moment, Mum is quarantined, and the situation is such that you get put through to the ward, but either no one answers or you are told that someone will phone you back – which doesn’t happen. So that triggers the brain to make you keep calling or has you on tenter hooks in case they ring, resulting in overwhelming and paralysing anxiety. The ways I can deal with this are to:

a) ‘Sucker punch’ the general switch board once a week with ‘Is my mother dead?’ – which gets instant phone backs !_! 🙁  I don’t do it more often.

b) Put my phone on aeroplane mode. This is awful, but it’s the only way to take your mind off what might be happening and get on with anything. IMO they don’t ring me now that she lives in residential care as they don’t need to send her back here – Next of Kin or not. 🙁

c) When I wake up, I reconnect the phone, and I get straight on with setting up planning, plotting and character stuff in a bag till sunrise. As the sun rises, so does any anxiety about what Mum might be enduring, and ‘The Need to Know’ takes over. But I have moved the wheel towards Camp Nanno regardless.

The story I want to attempt to finish in April is a light-hearted paranormal adventure. I had initially planned it at 60K. There are Bank Holl’s in April, and OH is off for one week doing lorry stuff, so he will be at home. Even allowing for those things, there is time to finish ‘Moonshine’ if I keep showing up first thing’. At the moment, I barely remember the plot, let alone the characters, so this week, I will refresh those notes and my memory. I will see if there is any magic left.

I very much hope my poor mum and the other poorly folk in that hospital are being treated kindly.