I am writing. I am writing, writing, writing. I figured out what was making my novel move like gum stuck to the rubber sole of my shoe, and I am writing. And it feels good.
I have a new outline one that is fast paced, one that is based off of a strong foundation of research and preparation. I know my characters like I know my best friends. I know what sets them off, what gets them riled up, how they will react to good news and bad.
More importantly I am about to tell a story that is mine and mine alone. Uniquely mine and I believe that there is an audience for it. That people will find my book interesting, and wonder why no one has ever come up with the world that I have come up with.
Writing this novel is like sharing my imaginary friends with hundreds of new friends. I have lived in this world for so long. I am about to jump head first into a mad rush of typing just to tell the story, the whole story, to a friend who is dying of cancer. Ok there is no friend that is dying of cancer, but that is what it feels like. Someone once described a short story to me as, "The Moment". It is the one story you have to share before you die. The most important moment of that characters life, the moment everything changes.
I suppose that is the critical element in a story. The character has to go through a change. On their journey from point a to point z several things happen. And just like a 40 year old adult in therapy, every single event that takes place in life shapes and molds a person. It either kills a small part of them, makes them a little more bitter, a little more cynical, or it gives them more faith, more confidence, more hope.
I got some good advice this weekend. And I had a lot of people who simply pointed me in the right direction. People who took my hand turned me a few degrees to the right and said, this way. Here is where you want to go, this is what you were looking for. I was close, I was on the right road, just missed the last turn, that's all.
I was also reminded of the power of belief. I got to see how far I have come in the last year, and I came to realize that no matter how impossible my dream of becoming a writer might seem to some, it is inevitable to me. This is what I was meant to do. I feel at home when I am with writers, when I am talking about writers. I get lost in it. I can go 12 hours without eating. I can go 24 hours without sleep. I can get lost in the writing, in the story, in the message. Is it exhausting? Yes. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth it. Because there is nothing better than putting the final staple in a short story, or the binder clip around 200 pages of manuscript. There is nothing better than looking at a stack of crisp white clean pages with rows of black text and knowing that this, this is the story you've been dying to tell. And though it hasn't happened I live for the moment when the first stranger will come to me and say this book, this novel, I couldn't put it down. I couldn't stop reading, and I loved it all. And for every 10 people that hate it, if one person fell absolutely in love with it I will be happy.
OK. I am going to go back to writing now. I have a few chapters to rewrite so that I can post them to my writing group. I want it posted before the end of the week.
