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New Spark

For those of you wondering where I've been since my last blog post, apart from travelling to Malaysia and Australia, you would be able to find out if you followed me on Twitter. For those of you who don't, and those of you who do (follow me on Twitter that is) I've been on a hiatus from writing while I recharged the batteries over what has been a most uninspiring season. My writing skills, and my desire to write, hibernate when the nights draw in.

Then a funny thing happened two days ago. I was walking to work listening to a decidedly "January" album, entitled "From Monday to Sunday" by Nick Heyward. And suddenly I was thinking out my nemesis novella, The Fourdrinier Operator, for which this album (along with "Astronauts" by The Lilac Time) has acted as a sort of soundtrack. Readers of this blog will know how much pain I've felt in concocting this piece of fiction. But the music helped me have a revelation. There were two things I needed to do to revitalise the piece. One was to change the name, which I have now done, and the other was to change where it was set. Suddenly, after a year, I was able to write another 500 words of the story and do some much needed editing on other parts. Much of the story is set in early Spring, so I hope that as the flowers start to bud and the sun shows it's face more often, and for longer, I'll feel that I have the wherewithal to actually finish the novella.
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