Writing Resolutions Workshop

I attended a workshop in Covent Garden yesterday hoping it would kickstart me into doing some regular writing again. I don't know what's happened. I used to be so prolific, writing short stories, keeping notebooks full of ideas, writing books just for the love of it...

I think one of the problems is that the arthritis in my fingers limits my typing, and as the appraisals and editing I do to earn a living require so much typing, it's too painful to do any more. Then there is the problem of trying to write in a freezing cold room. But, as a result of going to the workshop, I now see that there is no need to try and write thousands of words a day. Just a page would do, so long as it exercises the writing muscle. The hardest thing to do is start - and I used to find that the easiest. I was forever starting books, then abandoning them. I've even thrown some away which were laboriously typed in pre-computer days. (Well, on re-reading them they did seem like dire rubbish, my attempts at a Mills & Boon which failed to nail the genre.)

So... what am I going to write today? Well, unfortunately I have a job to finish by tomorrow, a short appraisal on somebody's first chapter, so I probably shan't start writing till tomorrow. And then...? Oh, darn it, I should try and fit in that page today, but I'm damned if I'm going to miss Lark Rise to Candleford! Perhaps a coffee, then a trip to the gym to wake me up. That mind-mapping they made us do yesterday, down on our knees on the floor with coloured pens, wore my brain out! I'd never heard of a mind map and didn't have a clue what I was supposed to be doing and ended up with a page covered in circles, hearts, pink pussy cats and... a ball and chain!