On Writing

Alan asked me yesterday when I was going to get back to the book.  Good question.  I'm thinking I might wait until the first of the year.  Is there any month more dreary, or longer, than January..??  Nope.  And though I'm not writing at the moment, my mind is constantly going over details that I either want to incorporate into the story, or remove from what's already written.  I might be suffering from the aftershocks of the worst November I've ever had and am half-afraid if I start writing again, December will be fraught with the same endless round of crisis after crisis.  Or maybe I'm just procrastinating, which is more likely.

Writing is hard.  The only thing that keeps me going are the unexpected flashes of surprise and out-of-my-control plot twists that give me such a rush, it makes all the anxieties and worries of the writing grind just melt away.  My heart pounds, my brain engages, and I will either laugh out loud, or leap out of my chair and yell, "No way!!"  It's amazingly cool when a blinding illumination writes itself across my computer screen--something that was not consciously in my mind, and is as much a stunner to me as I would hope it will be to a reader.  I don't know where these "bolts from the blue" come from, but it's like being struck by lightning: my brain sizzles, my fingers fly over the keyboard, I am briefly possessed, and everything disappears around me as I'm swept into the wonder of the story.  There is no other feeling in the world like it.

This morning I was reading an article on Huffington Post about Writing Aphorisms; wit and wisdom from authors like Hemingway, Dickens, Capote, etc.  Here's one that I love, and that just about says it all: