Flow

I'm back in the game (a bit) now. Back walking, I mean, and thinking, so that I can get back to writing. Dogs are good for making you do that, even if it's a borrowed dog (Frank is my son's dog, and he likes a good walk.) So, today, a walk next to the River Stour, which looks thick and stagnant, not even soupy, something more solid. There is no flow to speak of, yet there is movement beneath the surface for sure. And although I'm not writing - or haven't written - anything on the novel (for a month at least), the sense of it is with me constantly...

...which, when written down here, looks like a feeble excuse, I know, but sometimes - even if, like for me, it's been forced upon you - time is needed to work things out. And what I've worked out is that what I'm writing is not about trying to formulate a representation of the Black Country as a place, or a space, or a setting, or how it could be read through a lens of, say, geocritical theory, but it's more about how the Black Country is, or could be, present in the writing. I've opened that door of thought now, and it's clarified a goal, and I feel like I'm more in control of the task (two features, incidentally, of Flow theory.)