Wednesday 1 April 2020

Writing prompt: 300 words starting with, "I blame the quarantine."

This is not my idea, it belongs to Dr. Karen Boren a professor at Rhode Island College. Check the link to send your entry in. 

Here is mine: 
I blame the quarantine for getting me to write again.
It has been a long time, over six months since I've opened the Scribner project file for my second book, Atlantic Crossing. I was having an extended writer's block. It started soon after I had my writing group read it and make comments. It was much too soon. Stephen King said that he writes the first draft with the door closed and the second with it open. Even then, it is only his wife that gets to comment on it. I better remember this advice in the future.
There are other reasons why I didn't write for so long. I live on my sailboat in Greece. In spring I have many boat maintenance projects to tackle. With a helper to assist, we clean, sand, varnish, and paint leaving the writing simmering on the back burner of my mind.
In summer it gets even harder to get any work on my book done, because there are so many other, more fun things to do, such as suntanning, swimming, and hanging out in a cafe with friends.
I promise myself to write in the fall and winter when the weather deteriorates and I spend more time inside my boat. But this past winter, I fought and lost this promise, and instead played on my new keyboard, read, cooked, napped and of course, browsed the Internet.
In mid-March, Greece went into lockdown due to the Coronavirus and for the first two weeks, I followed the developments online. But now, I see that this will be a long quarantine and so have accepted the inevitable lost summer of sailing. After reading that Shakespeare wrote King Lear during the plague, I have finally set up a schedule to work on my soon to be a bestseller.
I blame it on the quarantine.


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