Saturday, May 28, 2011

With a little help from my friends

I'm writing, I'm writing, woo hoo!

I've been on an unplanned hiatus. Yes, I have been writing this blog and a couple others and working on getting book 3 of the Caribbean Adventure Series off of my desk and on to book shelves. But my ideas for new stories have been sitting on a shelf for longer than I would like to mention.

Now I'm writing again, with the help of some "friends". I took a writing class as a part of an editing course that I am pursuing. I had to submit a story and I decided, instead of starting something new, to dust off the first chapter of a novel that I had started and adapt it to become a short story. The response from my teacher and my classmates was very useful and encouraging and looking at the story through their eyes, I realised that I also wanted to know what would happen next.

Now, I'm ecstatic; putting out a few hundred words a day. Ideas are pouring out faster than I can write. I'm making notes in the car, in the dark, in the bathroom ... okay, too much information. Nothing is sacred anymore. Snippets of conversations, facial expressions, everything that happens around me can influence my writing, make a character a little more real. I feel a sense of freedom and I am once again assured this is what I am supposed to do!

4 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

that's what it feels like when you're having fun writing again. So glad for you. I'm feeling much the same so far this summer.

Liane Spicer said...

You're back in the zone, so - celebrate!

Jewel Amethyst said...

That happened to me after publishing my first two books. I got in a slump because with the extra pressure I placed on myself to produce a perfect manuscript in a timely manner, the writing became like a job and lost some of its appeal.

But I took a break, began a new manuscript and approached it as a hobby once more. No rigid schedules. No deadlines or targets. It got the juices flowing again. Now I'm ready to submit my WIP.

KeVin K. said...

Writing can be so isolated -- and isolating. Maybe I should take some writing classes to develop a few friends of my own.

Glad to hear you're writing again. And that you're enjoying the process.