So, with a few things happening in life over the last couple of months, myself, along with my wife and our pet dog went and took a week holiday, we sat in a little cottage with a wood burner on the side of Loch Sunart in Scotland. The weather was mixed, that is mixed sleet, hale and rain, with a good bit of wind thrown in. Guess that’s what you get for going in March!

We had both planned on taking some down time and perhaps doing some writing, reading and the odd walk with the hound. We achieved all of these, I have been suffering a little bit of writers block the last few months with my mind stuck on other things, but being able to sit at a table and look out of the window at the view below and start to type, scrawl and formulate plots was a really refreshing thing to do.

We plotted the plan we have to take over the world… well our plan for getting the house sorted over the next five years, get my wife’s business up and running full tilt and get me writing again. Seemed like a reasonable result.

What looking at that view doesn’t help so much with is space ships and battles in space; it does help with swords and magic and all things fantasy. The random sheep just strolling down the road right outside the window while munching some grass just adds comic effect. We both managed to get some creative juices flowing over the course of the week, the rare glimpse of sun through the clouds, the walks through the forest and the drive out to Polloch with its jaw dropping views as we came over the top of the single track mountain pass all added to my future arsenal for scenes and settings.
The other thing with a view like that is the temptation to just sit and look at it, and not actually get any writing done – I managed to kill a few hours like that!

There was no phone signal, no Wi-Fi and no contact with most of the outside world. We could visit the local village shop (a ten minute drive), and if we were lucky had enough signal to pick up voicemail. I call this bliss – my wife does not cope will without some sort of internet connection. It was nice to have the only time I picked up my phone to use the dictionary/thesaurus app on it – and yes I had been sensible and had made sure I had the offline version.

So my mind cleared? Maybe. Some more ideas for stuff to write – absolutely. I’ve not been able to write fantasy for a while, and to have some ideas crop up is good. I’ll have to see how they progress over the next weeks and months. What I had wanted to do was actually finish something so I could get it submitted somewhere, but noooooo, I had to go and have a load more ideas for me to work on! This hasn’t gone down so well with my wife who is already at me to finish one of the seven shorts and eight or so novels I have planned and in various stages.

Now – about that Diablo II game I’m in the middle off…..