I have recently come back to writing after a very long hiatus. Oh sure, I’ve written college papers (almost always at the last minute, thank you very much…my study habits were not the best), memos, grocery lists, and love notes. Over the last 15 or so years, however, my finished story count has stood at a whopping zero. I’ve started stories, jotted down ideas, even started a few outlines but never finished any of them. After awhile, I wasn’t even starting anything either.
I thought maybe I’d lost whatever it was that drove me to write on anything I could get my hands on when I was a kid. If I wasn’t writing the ideas down, they were running through my head almost constantly. I didn’t know where all of that creative energy had gone. It seemed like I’d neglected it and it had evaporated. I’d really begun to think it would never come back. I’d squandered whatever I had.
Depressing thought, no?
Somehow or other, I came across The Artist’s Way late last year. I started working the program (Hello. My name is Sonia and I’m a writer’s-blockaholic…) and I found a renewed sense of passion for writing. Within a couple of weeks, I wrote a short story. For me, that felt like a huge victory. On one of my Artist’s Dates, I found a copy of Book in a Month by Victoria Lynn Schmidt and started writing a novel. While I didn’t finish the novel in a month (it’s about three-quarters finished and currently on hold while I work out some plot issues), I was inspired to keep writing.
And here I am. There’s more, of course. I rarely follow a linear timeline when writing stories either. For now, though, that’s it.
