I've been home from vacation for almost two weeks, but I haven't gotten back into the writing groove. A large part of it, I know, is that I did that thing I told myself I'd never do again: I took a trip in the fall to somewhere with nice weather. Which meant I had to come back here afterward where everything is so cold and so wet and so dismal. I can't imagine why both sets of my grandparents moved here all those years ago, why they stayed. Why I've stayed.
In addition, the whole writing thing is overwhelming. Even though I'm sure it will all turn around eventually, it feels like it will never happen. Like I should just give up right now.
I'm having a severe case of "I don't fucking care" with the ms. I'm working on. I want to care, but every scene I attempt to write bores me. To regain the spark, I even tried writing a scene that I've been looking forward to since I first thought of this story. I can't get into it, though. It feels like I haven't earned it because I haven't written what is meant to come before. And it feels like I've lost Kae's voice. Like she was some character someone else was writing about once upon a time.
I still have three weeks left of my writing class. In theory, that should be giving me great incentive to move forward. I've already paid to work with this editor for three more weeks. If I don't turn anything in, I will have wasted my time and money. She can't give me feedback when I don't turn anything in. And later, after the class has ended, I'll be very, very upset that I didn't take full advantage. And yet, I still don't move forward. For the first time ever, I'm tempted to blow the whole thing off.
And my ex-husband. I guess when I really think about it, he comes into both of these things in a huge way. See, my vacation was to Kona, Hawaii. One of the two trips my ex and I ever took together was to Kona. (My character, Jason, was inspired by my ex, of course.)
Going back to Kona without him and his family was a good experience for me, and part of why I'd wanted to do it. (Also, I really like seeing the active lava.) I had a much better time. But it was also so strange because 10.5 years ago, I went to some of those same beaches and did some of those same things with them. I kept having little flashes of memories. Like how tense he was the entire trip. How worried he was that I was going to, like, embarrass him or something. How hard he worked to try to impress his parents for whom nothing he ever did was going to be good enough.
So, maybe that's the biggest part of the problem. Right now, I'm having a hard time wanting to write this story. I would have thought the memories would have made it flow even better, but they seem to have stopped everything up.