I think the blog is working ...

Before I started this blog I had lost the will to write. I'd try...but then I'd ask myself, Why bother? Who would want to read anything from me anyway? This went on for quite a long time. Having been a fairly confident writer, I suddenly seemed to lose it.

I waited...I took my time...I was gentle with myself...nothing happened. Now there's a surprise!

What did I expect? That, with no effort on my part, I'd simply wake up one day and have a Eureka moment? That a voice would whisper an amazing plot in my ear and I'd knock out that best seller in record time?
...maybe...?

Well anyway, that didn't happen. Surprise surprise.

I wasn't being pro-active at all, my imagination had gone walkabout, and I was starting to feel more and more frustrated with myself for not even trying to write.
I really needed to write something, anything, for my own satisfaction, just to show myself that I could still do it.
So, as you know, I started to write this little blog - just for me - I decided to let myself ramble on about anything that interested me at the time. As it happens I was growing more and more interested in tracing my family history. I've been recording my thoughts to help me to stay organised, and I've allowed myself to speculate on how my ancestors lived, worked, fought, loved, died...I let myself go with the flow. It didn't matter that I'd jumped from person to person, or that I'd drifted through time with no sense of order. The aim was to simply write anything.

And it's starting to work for me.

The other night I had an amazingly clear nightmare, so scary that I woke myself up reciting the Lord's Prayer over and over. So clear that I had to write it down. So weird ... that I now have the beginning of a plot for a story based on my family research.
Eureka!
Then today, wandering round an antiques fair, I spotted an unusual object that could have been used by one of my ancestors, and immediately a possible storyline popped into my head.
Double Eureka!

I'm still researching. I'm still eagerly sending off for birth, marriage and death certificates, and I'm still trawling through military records and devouring every fact that I can glean about these people whose genes I share.

But, alongside that, I'm starting to write again.
Thank goodness for that!