background music

I'd been giving myself a lot of grief lately, because I'd not been working on my current writing project (WIP = work in progress). I just couldn't settle down to it. The weird conundrum of lockdown is that I suddenly have acres of spare time but no drive or energy to do anything much with it. And that time has been passing, those days have been racking up into months, and my WIP hasn't gotten any fatter (unlike yours truly). But, what I'd been forgetting is that I have been working on drabbles, in a different notebook, all this time. Everyday, in fact, I work on the latest, like some people might work on the daily crossword. I do think of them as a form of puzzle to be solved...'write a story, in exactly 100 words.' They are tricky things to get right, using the exact right words (as I've said here before) and I enjoy the challenge. Anyway, what I've only just realised is that these ultra short stories I've been working on are directly related to my current WIP. What I've been turning out are either little character sketches, or snapshots of scenes. They may not fit directly into the finished story, but they are definitely of the story. They are research, they are supporting evidence, they are background music. I can't tell you how much better I feel about my writing now that I've figured out what I've actually been up to for these past few months.