Monday, July 15, 2019

Surprise? Writing Update

Surprise, I have a short writing project that'll be coming this month. More on that to follow. I only bring it up now not to tease you on it but to describe the effect its completion has had on me. Even though I wrote the first words of what will be my second novel (that is, not the short project coming up) four years ago, I haven't added to it at all in a year. I couldn't.

I had this other thing I needed to do first--and it wasn't until I got around to that one that I could go back to the novel. So today I did it, I went back to it. I should've known writer's mood was brewing when I looked to the refrigerator for a pickle and pickle juice (what? I haven't had pickle juice in years) and then to the freezer for ice cream that had been in there so long I had to scrape the ice off the top (I'm not an ice cream person). (And no, I'm not pregnant. That is not the only reason to feel like eating weird things. Sheesh.) Soon instead of the usual Spotify I've been relying on for music, I turned on Lacey Sturm and Flyleaf loud on my headphones and started free writing all over the floor.

My free writing is weird. That's the definition of free writing, though, isn't it? Just words that pop onto the page, no coherence. And yes, being on the floor is essential to the process. How anyone can do worthwhile writing in a chair I don't know. (No offense to the I'm sure many writers who write from chairs; it's just a joke.) My thoughts started turning to the setting of that long-abandoned book. So I traded out my free write notebook for the manuscript notebook. And I brought out the candy; candy is also essential to serious writing.

It's so hilarious looking at passages that I wrote years ago. So many of them seem like I wrote them this year. Looking at them, I literally can't believe that I didn't write them this year except for the fact that I know I didn't and even if I didn't, they have the dates written on them. (Putting dates on all your writing is something I highly recommend.) Maybe this is also why I had to leave this piece sitting for so long. Partly because I needed to get around to that other project, but also because I needed to catch up to a certain strain of thought that I was writing before I was even aware of it.

Anyways. I feel like I'm back in time, back to when I was writing full time on my first novel. I mean, I won't be writing full time on this one, but the act of being with it reminds me of that time.

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