Coming Back to the Page

I used to think that if I ever stopped writing, it would be because I had nothing left to say.

Turns out, that wasn’t it at all.

The words didn’t disappear. They accumulated. Quietly. Like things stored away for safekeeping and then left untouched for so long that opening the door began to feel more daunting than leaving it closed.

The hiatus wasn’t planned. It never is. No one consciously decides to step away from the thing that makes sense of the world. Life simply intervenes… with responsibility, grief, logistics, survival. And somewhere along the line, the habit breaks.

Not with drama. No declaration. You just stop.

A day becomes a week. A week stretches into months. Months slip into years. You still think like a writer… notice things, turn phrases over in your head, mentally bookmark moments, but there’s nowhere for them to land. No page. No container.

What surprised me wasn’t how easy it was to stop writing.

It was how hard it was to begin again.

There’s a peculiar fear that settles in after a long gap: the suspicion that whatever ability you once had has gone stale. That you’ll sit down, full of intention, and discover the voice you trusted has quietly packed up and left. So instead of writing, you defer. You tidy. You research. You reread old work with a mixture of fondness and disbelief and promise yourself you’ll start tomorrow, when conditions are better and confidence has miraculously returned.

Confidence, as it turns out, does not work that way.

What finally nudged me back wasn’t inspiration or free time, but the simple realization that not writing had begun to feel worse than the fear of writing badly.

Around the same time, I came across a newspaper cutting from when I was nineteen: a small local piece announcing me as “Most Promising,” complete with photographs of illustrations I’d almost forgotten I’d drawn. I don’t remember how long it had been tucked away, only that finding it felt oddly grounding rather than sentimental. It wasn’t proof of lost potential or a reminder of roads not taken. It was evidence of continuity.

The impulse to write and illustrate was there long before I had any real understanding of careers, publishing, or what it meant to sustain a creative life. It didn’t vanish during the years I wasn’t producing work. It simply went quiet while other things demanded attention.

So I started again, imperfectly.

I wrote things that went nowhere. I deleted more than I kept. I stared at the screen and thought, This is dreadful, and carried on regardless. Because the only thing worse than rusty writing is no writing at all.

And then, without ceremony, something familiar returned. Not confidence, not brilliance, but rhythm. Cadence. The sense of when a sentence has said enough. The instinct to pause, to cut, to let something breathe.

I was reminded that writing isn’t about waiting until you feel like a writer again. It’s about showing up long enough for the work to remind you that you are one.

The hiatus didn’t erase anything. It changed the terrain. I’m not picking up where I left off; I’m picking up from somewhere new, with more patience, more experience, and far less interest in pretending.

I’m writing again now, and I have new projects moving toward publication. Not as a return to something abandoned, but as a continuation of a thread that’s been there all along.

I’m not “back” in any triumphant sense. I’m simply here. Working. Paying attention. Leaving breadcrumbs again.

For now, that feels exactly right.

My non-fiction book, Ireland: Land of Legends comes out next month, and soon after The Lost Ones, featured in the article below. After all these years!