I know it has been quite some time since I last posted. I was definitely going through a rough patch (six months) and not feeling anything. I wasn't creative, I wasn't happy, I wasn't sad, I just was. For weeks I tried to tell myself that if I just sat down and started doing something, anything, it would all come back to me. So that's what I did.
It totally backfired. After about a week of forcing myself to write/edit I wound up with a whole bunch of X's and black lines through my work. Everything I touched turned to crap. I got so frustrated that I just shut down. My personal life was taking the brunt of my misery. And my characters? Heaven forbid they tried to get in contact with me. I seriously wrote one of my main characters out of Chapter 1 of the novel she was in just because I was annoyed that I was thinking of her. It really was that bad. And then something crazy happened.
I had an idea. The next day another one came to me. Then a third. I met with my writing group and we talked about Camp NaNo. All of a sudden plots, characters, sub-plots, and dialog started flooding my brain. Within a couple days I had a fully fleshed out idea (which NEVER happens to me), a great jumping off point, and one of the best first lines I feel I have ever written. And I was excited!
Camp was about a week away so I decided just to jot down a few errant thoughts so as not to "cheat". A thought became a few lines, a few lines a paragraph, and before I knew it I was almost a full chapter into what I was working on. I couldn't believe it, still can't. It's like a door that was inside of me unlocked and everything behind it just tore it off the hinges. I love what I'm working on.
Now all I have to do is gather all the notes I've taken in various places and put it all together. I remember why I started all this insanity in the first place. And it is awesome!
