New beginnings

The writing challenges have had a wondrous effect. I can feel creativity returning to me bit by bit. Today, while waiting in the doctor's office, I began a new novel, and I'm excited about it.

For the first time in ages, I'm excited to be writing again. While challenges and mini contests I've competed in have been successful in preventing my creative juices form drying up altogether, they feel a bit like a chore. They all have guidelines, criteria, provided plot elements, that I have to meet or include. It is restrained creativity.

Writing a novel leaves all of those constraints behind. The characterization, setting, and genre are my choice. I'm free to take the story where it wants to go. It's refreshing.

Now comes the hard part: maintaining enough momentum that this novel doesn't get discarded before it's finished. I have at least half a dozen beginnings of novels that are collecting dust, most of them deservedly so. They weren't any good.

But the Fraud Police are a powerful force, and can convince me than nothing I write is good enough to see the light of day. It's a constant struggle to overpower their negativity, but I want to write, so even if it isn't any good, even if not a single person will ever read it, even if it's doomed to spend eternity in a dusty notebook hidden away in storage, I will write. I will fill every page.