Jump back in

Yesterday, Sunday, was an amazing day, sunny, a bit windy yet calm by demeanor, if days have a demeanor. My husband went fishing early, the house was mine, and clean, so I didn’t have a long list of to-dos…I could do anything I wanted and what I wanted to do was write. 

All finished in my mind, and with little actually written, I had set aside my latest book. The decision of whether to continue has been rattling around in my head like a monotonous chorus and melody playing over and over in my mind; should I, or shouldn’t I? Because the ideas, to continue or quit, were so prevalent I knew not to dismiss either the pro or the con. A few days before, I read a comment from a writer I often see jumping in here and there as I wander from blog to blog. She suggested I reread my original post about the book and try to grasp that new-found enthusiasm. 

I did.

And on Sunday I recaptured all the characters and plot and ideas and gathered them at my kitchen table for a conference. With beautiful music playing in the background I began again. This time, I didn’t write what I thought someone else might want to read, I didn’t write ‘proper’, I wrote in a voice which is characteristically mine. Is the main character me, thank God no, but she sounds like me, she says fuck and shit, she laughs and she cries, just like I do.

I spent Sunday writing about her ‘discovery of place’ and as I did I cried because what she was going through was so tragic and heartbreaking…I couldn’t help but recall my own setbacks. Were the scenes overly sentimental, do they manipulate the reader’s heart, are they depressing, no they are none of those things because I don’t like to enter the heart of the reader just so I may break it later. I like to warm the heart, inform the mind in a wide-eyed way and make readers smile after the ugly-cry.  

Ten pages.

Doesn’t sound like much but what I did was rediscover the wonderful world handed to me by the little voices in my head, and the mysterious place from which stories come, during a ten minute ride in my car.

When the movie is made, J is invited to the screening. I never would have restarted if it weren’t for her.

Think of your last amazing day of creating another world and how good you felt while giving birth to it. Just think about it, you certainly don’t have to share it here. Remember the magic, than pass it on somewhere, so another writer teetering on the edge of the next ten pages, might use it as a platform for a high-dive to a realized dream.