However, the will is still there. In past years I wouldn't be writing at all, but at least now my focus is still on ideas. I haven't submitted to any competitions over the summer, but I have been planning, researching and sketching out ideas for longer projects which are genuinely exciting, and I have also been reading in preparation for returning to my studies later this year.
In sorting through old, half forgotten papers today, I found excerpts and scripts from projects that I cannot even recall. Appalling, mawkish narrative, contrived and hackneyed, but from a time in my life where writing was a necessity, rather than a luxury. For so many reasons, writing needs to become a default setting again. It needs to be woven into the fabric of my life. It is not going to be easy, but it needs to become a reality. I look forward to making room for it once more.
Writing took a back seat for several years, but this will not happen again. It simply cannot.