Learning to write again is like coming off medication.
Except I'm not learning to write again exactly; that doesn't ever go. What does go AWOL is the ability to recognise that you do have talent; that you can write and you can express yourself with a pen and paper (or a computer and keyboard).
It's a slow process and can be extremely frustrating, too. You know what you want to write but you just can't get down the way you feel it should be.
I've acquired a very cheap Psion (£1 in a charity shop in Watford) and it works very well considering it's been dropped. I use it to ask myself questions about what my character should be doing, or thinking in his/her current situation. Anything to get the writing processes kick-started again. At a later date I will then answer those questions in the novel itself.
I'm lucky; a good part of my novel is already written thanks to the short stories I wrote some time ago. All I need to do is to work them all together. But, I need an introduction (which I'm working on now) and a reason as to why this situation is happening.
It's easy to just write a story with the bare outlines but there has to be a reason why your character may behave in a particular way. Why hasn't he/she escaped? Has she tried at all? Or has he just accepted his fate?
That sort of thing.
I haven't given up on the speech to text software. It will come into its own much later.
For now, I'm just happy taking things slow.
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