Sarah O'Connor

The title says it all folks, I’m in a funk, more particularly a writing funk, and I don’t really know why.

This isn’t an odd thing to happen to me, I actually think it might be an annual thing (okay, maybe more than annual) that usually happens to me around this time of year. I just get unmotivated and can’t write.

It’s been a week (okay, maybe more) since I’ve written anything creative. To be fair, I haven’t been able to attend my writing club in two weeks. I adopted Cordelia last week and wanted to help her adjust to her new home, and this week I was at Toronto Comic Con. I won’t be able to go this week either because rehearsals for my HamilTEN show are being moved to Saturday mornings, but I should be able to in two weeks’ time during Easter, since I cancelled practice for that weekend. I’ve been able to keep my blog posts regular, which is a good thing, and I’ve been writing steadily on my book review blog which I’m also proud of, but I’d rather be doing more creative writing.

And there really isn’t a reason I’m not, I’m just not motivated. The story I’ve been working on for a good two or three months now has started to become uninteresting to me, and I’ve realized that there isn’t much happening plot-wise as I expected there to be. And while I’ve been fussing over having no ideas for that, I thought of a better way to tell my NaNoWriMo project (which I’ve done a poor job at editing) so I’ve been at a crossroads about whether to finish something I’ve been working on for a few months or to start retelling my project from November.

So instead of doing either I’ve done nothing, which isn’t a good solution but it is the easiest. I know it’s something I have to stop, that the best thing to do would be to hunker down and write but…

I think part of it is impostor syndrome, which I definitely have and being in a writing funk definitely doesn’t help that. Since I’m having trouble writing creatively, I just can’t help but think I’m foolish for wanting to be a writer at all, that I’ll never be at the level I want to be at. But another more logical part of me knows there’s no way to see what level I’m at, and that being in a funk doesn’t mean I’m not meant to do this, it’s just a slump and people have them and get out of them all the time.

But I’ve written this, so I guess that’s something.

…

Welp! Writing about my writing funk was a lot shorter than I thought, so I’m going to talk about Toronto Comic Con too, because that’s what I did on Saturday.

My sister and I love going to conventions. We went to our first one with a friend in our city probably about four years ago (which seems a lot longer than I thought it was) and completely fell in love with it. It’s so much fun to see other nerds and geeks enjoying nerdy and geeky things. There are so many amazing cosplayers, and it’s comforting to see people enjoying a television show, movie, or actor just as much as you do.

My sister and I haven’t been to Toronto Comic Con for two years, so it was nice to go this year, and even nicer that Toronto Comic Con is a relatively smaller convention. Small in comparison to FanExpo standards, which while fun is an insane and stressful (though memorable) few days.

We went with a large group of friends (six in total) and most of us cosplayed. My friend is a cosplayer (follow PizzaDogCosplay yooo!) and dressed as Tinkerbell, my other friend dressed as Marinette from Miraculous Ladybug, my sister was genderbent Jughead from Riverdale, and because I’m lazy (and have the bangs) I dressed as Tina Belcher from Bob’s Burgers. My sister’s boyfriend planned on cosplaying but ultimately didn’t have time to, but we’re all planning on doing a humanoid (is that the right word? Maybe?) Hamtaro cosplay at some point. I know it sounds weird, but it’s going to be awesome, trust me. It was his first convention, but my sister said he had a good time so that’s a good thing!

Toronto Comic Con only takes place in one side of convention centre, whereas FanExpo takes place in both which involves a lot of frustrating travel to and from the different buildings. I was happy we didn’t have to do that for this Con because rushing from panel to panel is annoying.

We looked at Artist’s Alley, which is easily my favourite part of conventions, and bought some cool things (though not as much as I thought I’d spend, AND I BOUGHT A UNICORN CARD GAME!!!) and my sister and I got our individual copies of Anne of Green Gables signed by Megan Follows, who played Anne in the 1985 Canadian miniseries of Anne of Green Gables. She was very nice to talk to, and told me some facts about the book. I got her to sign my first Canadian edition of the book and she told me how L.M. Montgomery couldn’t get the book published in Canada so had to do so in Boston. So technically, a Canadian classic was published nearly forty years by American publishers before a Canadian publisher decided to publish a copy of the book.

We spent most of the day looking around the dealer’s area and artist’s alley, and when we finished with that a few of our group went to see Mara Wilson’s Q and A panel while the other two went to take pictures of their cosplay. Mara Wilson was a child actor, probably best known as playing Matilda in the titular movie, but has now focused her career on writing and voice acting. It was a very good panel and it was amazing to see how many people were inspired and chose certain careers (teaching, librarian, etc.) because of their love for the movie Matilda. Wilson seems like a very intelligent and down to earth woman and I’m glad we got a chance to hear her speak.

The Con wasn’t over but we all agreed we’d seen everything, so we went to Subway for food, back to the convention centre to eat our food, then to Union to get some Uncle Tetsu cheesecake, and finally took the Go Bus home, ready to sleep after an exhausting Con.

We’re already planning our conventions for the rest of the year, and I’m excited to see what will happen and who will be there when we do!