Back to the grindstone

After a long break courtesy of bank holidays, bad weather and general not-wanting-to-workness, I finally settled down to writing again today. It wasn't much - a short, thousand word story about killer crossword puzzles for my crime anthology - but it's the first time I've put fingernail to keyboard in nearly a month.

I say 'grindstone' in the title of this post but actually it feels great to be back at work again. Like many writers I get fidgety if I have too long away from the craft; sometimes 'fidgety' is the least of it and 'irritable' or even 'exasperated' might describe my mood better. I saw a quote recently about writers never having a holiday because even when they're not physically writing, they're still working on ideas, and it rang very true. Sometimes all those ideas build up and build up until you just have to get them down on paper, or explode. Luckily for the walls and carpet I managed without the explosion but this particular story has been fizzing around my brain since before Christmas and it's still a relief to get it finished.