Disconnected

Hey guys. It’s been a long time since I posted something on the blog even if it doesn’t seem like it at first glance. All the content since December 16th has been scheduled, so the blog wouldn’t be empty and unloved when I was in Sweden. And I’m glad I did, because my time there was extremely busy and I didn’t have time to do anything, basically.

We got back home after 30 hours of traveling (damn those delays!) on New Year’s Eve. 7 hours time difference between Sweden and Malaysia makes jet lag unavoidable, so I’m slowly working my way from Swedish time to Malaysian. And not surprisingly I woke up with a fever last week. It’s pretty darn cold in Sweden (even if it was warm for the season) and my entire immediate family had a cold so I guess it was inescapable.

All this has made me feel really disconnected from my author life and now I really need to get back on track. I took some baby steps last week: I wrote a little poetry, I beta-read a bunch of short stories for an author friend of mine, and I discussed an idea I have for a story with another author friend.

But I still have to sit down and do some actual writing, and it’s hard. It’s like I’m afraid I might have lost my talent during the last few weeks, and have forgotten how to do it.

I guess there’s truth to the old write every day-advice, it’s hard to get back to it once I’ve fallen out of habit. I just don’t know how to combine a busy trip back home to Sweden and still find time to write something every day. How do you guys do it? Any advice for this newbie writer?

Anyway, I’ve made a plan for the immediate future:

• Edit Unconditionally as soon as I hear from the publisher’s editor
• Start editing The Locked Room – I actually thought about it the other day and felt excited about it for the first time in months. That’s a good sign, right?
• Write my next story, the one I mentioned earlier. I wrote chapter one before I left for Sweden and I have a plan on how to continue, but I need to sit down and actually write. So that’s on the agenda for tomorrow.

I guess I know where to start?