I'm Doing That Writing Thing Again

So... I hit File>New Document over the weekend.

It was really scary.

There's nothing quite like a white surface to truly make a writer feel inadequate and terrified. But it also stands as a challenge, and my brain was ready to churn out the words.

My last foray into writing a novel is all nicely packaged up, ready for you to get curious about it when September of 2015 rolls around. That one is a Gothic historical thriller set in an insane asylum - very cheery. It was a ton of work to write, research, double-checking, caution with dialogue, moody ambience and tip-toe phrasing.

Kind of like torture with your own brain and a laptop.

So this new thing... it's pretty different. It's the kind of story that might actually pull an Athena and just pop out of my frontal lobe fully formed. Writing a story that wants to be written is a rush, but it's also terrifying in it's own way.

Am I writing this too quickly?
Am I deluding myself that this is decent?
Is it coming too easily to actually be worthwhile?
Is it coming so quickly that I'm not able to capture everything in time?

Answer to all the above is: I don't know.

I'm just going to keep writing. We'll see about the rest.

The Stuff Of Dreams

If you visit this blog or read any of my interviews you know that the concept for NOT A DROP TO DRINK came from a dream that I had. Sometimes inspiration comes like that, in a bolt from the sky that you can't ignore. The words pour out, and anywhere from a weeks to a few months after that lightning strike you've got a finished (messy, but finished) first draft in your hands.

And... then there are the other times.

There are the times you sit in front of the laptop and nothing happens. The screen glows accusingly, and there's not nearly enough black streaking across all that white. There are the times when people ask what you're working on right now and you have to answer honestly... nothing.

I don't believe in writer's block. I honestly don't. I think writer's block is what happens when you're too scared to sit down and force it, resulting in procrastination that is rooted in our self-esteem, not our capabilities.

But I do think that concepts can't be forced. They have to happen organically, like that storm in your head that suddenly delivers a story you can't stop spinning, or a dream that delivers your next novel, gift-wrapped.

Here in Ohio we had a short blizzard, followed by an ice storm this weekend followed by... thunderstorms today. Let's hope all the meteorological dust up sinks into my mind.

A lightning strike would be much welcomed :)

Getting Ready To Crawl Into The Cave

The Cave is beckoning me. The one that I go into when it's time to write, research, edit, or just ignore reality in general. I'm fortunate because there's a physical cave (my bedroom), but there's also one in my head that I can dive into every now and then in public and no one has any idea that I'm just not really there anymore.

Writing is a funny business, because I'd say most of the writing that I do has nothing to do with actually writing. Most of it is me taking little brain day-trips into the cave while my body keeps doing important things (like work) and my brain is like, "Hey, what if this happened? Ohh... or then this? And what about THAT?"

A lot of the real work is just me, staring into space, putting people that don't exist through things that never actually happened. Usually I end up pulling them back out and making them do it again, seeing if we get a different result the next time. These poor people. Sometimes I imagine my characters are probably like -- "Really, we got this girl? Why can't I end up in a nice rom-com?"

And the answer to that is - Mindy's cave art is not conducive to rom-coms.