Sweet Sorrow? Are you kidding!

So, I haven’t blogged for ages … you might now have a better sense of why I’m clearly not the candidate to back in the run for the Booker Prize. (Yes, I change prizes frequently, just as I change my shoes, my career aspirations and my underwear - but I just don’t like hedging my bets!)

So, in the lead up to the Miles Franklin masterpiece that I am slowly creating, it’s been quite a tumultuous few weeks. I’m quite an emotional person, I’m afraid, and the month of July thus far has seen some stress on the heartstrings. A friend of mine from my Pro-Writing degree once told me that she was no longer able to write, because she was so happy in her life “right now” the angst that had once fuelled her creativity was gone and she couldn’t churn out a sentence.

I doubt I’ve ever been more jealous of anyone in my life!!! Forget beauty, forget height, forget money, I don’t want it! If angst were the key to my writing success, I’d have won every literary prize under the sun! My 20s were a steaming vat of boiling, tortured angst. And then I grew up and got over it; as you do.

But I’d stopped writing.

I suppose I could have started churning out novels about serial killers and plagues, but it was never what I wanted to write about – because I’m happy when I write, so I didn’t want to write about awful things. So I just wrote nothing at all.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m ok; just one of those months where a variety of stressors seem to crop up at once. But the slightest bit of anguish seems to be the antithesis of creativity for me: it’s the Judas to my right side brain, the Lithium to my inner intensity. The reaper of my creative impulses! (And that’s Grim Reaper, if you haven’t already worked that out!)

So if anyone has a cupcake for me … And I will share my Premier’s prize with you! :-)