Over the past few years, I’ve been working, off and on, on the Halloween murder mystery I described last week. I hadn’t touched it in several months when I sat down to work on the first draft last Friday. I felt a great reluctance to start writing.
During the past year, most of my writing consisted of blog posts and revising my first novel. Sitting at my kitchen table last week, doubt gripped me. It had been so long since I had done original fiction that I wondered if I had anything left to say. Maybe I just had one book in me. I had lots of ideas, but that’s not the same was writing them done and then pounding them into comprehensible structure.
I thought of so many others things I needed to do like laundry, and weeding and cleaning out our home office. I was afraid to make myself write for fear no words would come.
But I forced myself to stay at the table with my pen and paper, ignore the demands for clean clothes and orderly flower beds, and with great anxiety, I WROTE!
And the words came.
Maybe not great words, maybe not compelling words, but ink on paper is better than no ink on paper.
And I enjoyed myself hugely, diving into my imaginary word with some characters I’ve known half my life.
I learned that when when writing is a burden instead of a joy, KEEP WRITING! Eventually the joy will return. But it never can if I quit.
The picture below sums it up perfectly.
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