It would appear that I found my motivation, which has been MIA since the end of last year.
The key was answering some questions for an interview I’d agreed to do several weeks ago, but never finished because I was doing other stuff. I knew it had to be done, though, so part of my brain was constantly working on it, while other parts of my brain checked in on its progress, and bugged me to give it the attention it deserved.
If I think of my brain as a computer (and what geek doesn’t, really?) it was like my CPU was maxed out and my machine load was in the double digits, because of this process. Once I closed down everything else and let it finish, performance returned to normal.
With my CPU back to normal, a ton of creative ideas started popping up, so to shake off the cobwebs and stretch the muscles that haven’t moved very much in over a month, I wrote a new ficlet. It got the job done for me, creatively, and it would be okay on its own, but became worthy of mentioning on my blog when two other ficlet writers did sequels. Mine is called A Godawful Small Affair:
“I want to move to Mars, and open up a bar,” Gregor said.
Matti inhaled deeply, and let a cloud of pale blue smoke surround his head.
“What would you call it?” Matti said.
“Moonage Daydream.” Gregor said.
Check it out, and be sure to read both sequels. I think they’re great, and illustrate exactly why Ficlets is such a great place to take creative risks: I didn’t much care about these characters when I wrote mine, but after reading the sequels and seeing my rough sketches develop some shading and depth, I want to know what happens next. I may even write it myself, once I get my "real" work done.