Blue Monday

Today is the most depressing day of the year.  Monday 21^st January.  It’s nice that we’ve gotten it out of the way so quickly.

Apparently, some British pyschologist created a formula to calculate the most depressing day of the year taking into account post-Christmas bills, the weather (very apt for this year) and failed New Year resolutions.  He came up with the third Monday of January.  Today!

How was your most depressing day?  I imagine the majority of the nation was definitely not depressed, enjoying the snow day that us Bristolians had on Friday.

To be honest, I was quite down over the weekend as well as today.  Outside was freezing cold, my wonderful circulation and the freezing temperatures have given me two incredibly painful chilblains, one of our guinea pigs is a bit poorly, my laptop is slowly falling apart and is driving me insane, the day job just takes up too many hours in the day and I’m going through one of those familiar phases of being certain that I’m an awful writer.

I put aside some time today in order to write a fictional piece for this blog post and ended up staring at a blank document.  I only remembered my target of completing a chapter of my novel while I was in the shower this evening, washing away the day.  Damn.

So, it’s going well.

There are many ways to stave off the winter blues but keeping away the writing blues is somehow very difficult.  You should try to stay positive, put aside such negative thinking and just keep slogging away.

Much easier said than done.

I think part of the problem I’m having is that this novel is taking so long.  I read an article today which named a writer who has written nine books in ten years.  I hate her.

How on earth do you finish a book?  Especially when plagued with paranoia that your writing just isn’t up to scratch.

Experience has shown me that time is a great healer.  My confidence will return soon, I’m sure.  Just as my guinea pig will feel better, my toes will heal, the weather will improve (wouldn’t it be lovely to have an actual summer this year), I will buy myself a new laptop and I might even find some more hours in the day (part time work anyone?)

I just need to be patient...