I Feel Like I've Fallen Off The Edge Of The World

Introduction

A repost of my 1,001st story, and I feel more like this today, as Vocal have not allowed me to publish a brand new story since the 23rd of November last year and has not communicated with me since the 5th of December last year about the situation.

This is my thousand and first post, and in my run-up to my thousandth post, I was excited as I got closer to the target, but now that it’s done, I sort of feel empty, creatively. I obviously can’t be because I am writing this. I feel like the lorry at the end of Steven Spielberg’s debut “Duel” that goes up the hill and then plummets to its deserved demise onto the rocks below. I really don’t want to end up on those rocks, but I feel I am standing on the edge of a creative abyss.

Am I Really Though?

Although that is my feeling inside, my mind has already set me up with two new pieces to write, so I am not going to stop. I am lucky to have what seems to be the opposite of “Writer’s Block”, which is a permanent drip of ideas on tap. This brings its own pressure, but it is a good pressure to have. I wrote my thousandth story last night, then today used the two open Vocal Challenges to write a dystopian fiction and a crazy dream poem, the three combining for me to hit the thousand story finishing line.

In the Vocal and Medium Cafe, someone has suggested that I do it again, and I will keep writing, but two thousand stories is a long way off, and to make it by the end of 2023, I would have to post three stories every day, and even with my output, I would say that is highly unlikely. If I did two articles or fictions and a poem a day, that would be fifteen hundred words a day, which would be over half a million words, although in the stories I have already posted, there will be well over three quarters of a million words that are on Vocal from my keyboard.

In addition to this, there are my Night Cafe creations, most of which are available for free (though you can tip) on my Pixabay page. I also upload photographs to Unsplash that people can download for free if they want to use them.

Looking Out The Window

The weather is dreich, which is the most uninspirational weather imaginable, but ironically is also giving me something to write about. I watch “The Never Ending Story” again yesterday (it gave me a title for a directory piece in my early Vocal days which is still my second most read Vocal Story although is is not really a story) and the concept of Fantasia (our dream world) being destroyed by The Nothing because people have stopped dreaming and believing in dreams is very close to my feelings at the moment.

The grey nothingness of the sky outside makes me think of The Nothing.

The answer, of course, is to believe in yourself and others, and believe that good things will happen and that you can make them happen.

This Must Be Like

When anyone tries for something and succeeds, suddenly you have done it, you have hit the target, and now you do not need to try to do that any more. The reality is that usually you then go on and find another target to tackle and hit, and I will certainly do that. Just writing this story has cleared a lot of the doubt from my system.

Conclusion

We have always got to move on, but that does not mean purging the good things and forgetting the lessons of our past. We use those to build our future, and there is a lot more to come from me on Vocal. Maybe I will get a Top Story for Fiction, maybe I will place or even win in a Vocal Challenge, one can never