By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues
Every writer knows that sometimes things get a bit too much and that story that seems so fluid in your head somehow stumbles on that path between your brain and your fingers. No matter how you try writer’s block is a given and something many struggle to overcome. There is no easy solution to beating it.
At one point I had completely lost my mojo for nearly a year. I tried time and again to write but it didn’t feel right or read well and to this day I could not tell you why it hit me for so long. Stories and characters would rush through my head constantly but when I sat in front of that keyboard, it deflated quicker than brewers’s droop.
But in time it came back. Maybe I had written too much and put so time into it with no obvious return that part of me subconsciously gave up. I write best when the house is asleep and naked if I’m honest about it. The words and stories come flooding out because there are no distractions but this can impact your paying day job as late night sessions impact the recommended eight hours for total body health. So that in itself is a fine line to walk. You have to pay the bills but you’re driven by this urge to get these stories and characters on paper in the hopes they may one fay pay those bills leaving you free. There have been many nights where I have lain in the dark tossing and turning. My rational mind is telling me to get to sleep as work hours were not that far away while the other part of me was gnawing at me to get up and write stuff down. That was how my first Zombie Blues story came about. It was written at two o’clock in the morning and the whole first zombie story was completed there and then. I immediately went back to bed and fell right to sleep.
But it’s not always that simple. Right now I’m knee deep in editing Zombie Blues 3, The Time Warriors Only the Dead Get Off at Kymlinge & Other Stories and the new book Darklands and had an idea for The Last Tiger for the Time Warriors series. So it’s very easy to overload the brain so this weekend I walked away for some head space. First of all i took my wife to dinner for her birthday, attended Comic Con Northern ireland out in the Eikon Centre, Lisburn and then went for a walk round the Titanic Quarter and the Belfast Harbour where we had some lunch.
I tell you it cleared my head, helped me to rela and hence this article is the result as well as continuing with Darklands or the Last Tiger, depending on which one fires up in my head.
Another of the things closest to my heart is photography so I was able to kill two birds with one stone as with writing you need a certain eye for photography. With writing and photography you see things a little differently, think sideways.
Now none of this is life changing stuff but maybe it will help someone out there stuck between the real world and the one they are trying to put down on paper. So before work tomorrow, I have to pay a quick visit to the walls of reality crumbling threatening us all. Well, that’s a story for the future. As always. stay tuned.
The Time Warriors and Beyond 