When I came back to Cyprus from my undergraduate studies, I was reading The Lord of the Rings and The Dragonbone Chair. "What books are these?" People asked. I said, "fantasy". People just stared. Nobody knew what fantasy and the genre of the fantastic was. Now I get asked, "what's your new novel"? (By friends, sadly I'm not famous). I answer, "fantasy". The answer is a big smile. Everyone knows fantasy now. Here I am recovering from writer's block and going back to handwritten work!!!
Having writer's block made me scared, coz the other one I had lasted for a decade. Eventually, I realized what was to blame! It was that I wrote everything directly on the screen. I am a pen and paper person, it seems. No screen for me!
My directly on screen record is something like this. I completed one novel I had started on paper on screen: that was my second volume of Sleight of Hand. Then, I wrote one full novel on screen (The Doll's Tale). However, the Doll needed three major revisions, which took me about five months in total. As for two novels I started after that, I felt I could not go on. Writing directly on screen made me lose a sense of what happened in the novel. So it was back to pen and paper!
Of course, there may be other reasons why we have a writer's block. Life's difficulties often get the better of us and affect our inspiration. However, the new novel is going well, which is excellent news. It's a fantasy young adult novel, as yet untitled. It's no Lord of the Rings. But it's exciting!!!
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