I’m 25 thousand words into my novel. That’s about 25 thousand more than I ever believed I’d write. Seriously. The dreams I had in high school of writing the next great American novel died a long, long time ago.
Yet when the dreams for this book started, I couldn’t forget them. They haunted me. They kept me up at night. The scenes playing out in my head like a movie, and my brain writing further scenes. Telling the story.
Art, any art is a birthing process. You are giving up a little piece of yourself. Painting it on canvas. Writing in on paper. Carving it in stone.
My toughest challenge throughout the year that I’ve been working on my book has been trudging through the mud. Sometimes the words and the scenes flow like liquid caramel. Other times…. other times it will be weeks (or months) between writing.
Shawn constantly asks me if I know where I want to end up. If I know where the story is going. I do. In fact my epilogue has been written for a long time. But getting from A to Z means fleshing out what takes place in those in between parts. Even in the in between parts of the in between parts that I know I want to write.
The time and the mud trudging has been good for me, even if incredibly annoying (because what author wants to not have words ready on the tip of her tongue). I’ve learned a lot about myself in the process. I find myself worthy of the aggravation because I am pouring myself into it, and allowing the painfulness of birth.
