Jumpstarting by Jane Kindred

If you’ve seen my recent posts, you know that I’ve been going through an extremely dry spell. The well of ideas I’ve been dipping into since childhood has been coming up with a ladle full of nothing but dust. Though I tried to drag two murky characters up to the surface and into the light (okay, so it’s a mixed metaphor; just go with it), “Armand and William,” mentioned in my previous blog post, refused to speak to me. Even after I threatened William with being called “Billy.”

I took a week off from work at the end of May just to make myself write something, anything…and did nothing but work puzzles on my iPad and color in my mandala coloring book while watching Hallmark mysteries and romances. (In other words, the same things I’ve been doing for months.) Since finishing the final book in the Sisters in Sin series in February, I hadn’t written a single word.

But this past Sunday, I decided to go to a café down the street and try to write. Part of my difficulty with writing in recent months is dealing with my elderly cat and his literal caterwauling every moment that he’s not sitting in my lap, so I thought maybe a change of scenery with less howling would work. I honestly didn’t think it would, because I usually can’t write with other people around, but I was sick of hating myself for doing nothing. I got a latte and a pastry, perused social media until the pastry was done, and then set the timer on my phone, telling myself that I had to write for 15 minutes, no matter how stupid the words, and then I could look at Twitter again for 5 minutes as my reward. (A dubious reward, but these are dubious times.)

And despite the fact that there was music playing in the café, another thing I usually can’t write with, I just started writing a completely new story. And I wrote for three hours.

It’s some serious crap at the moment, but it’s crap with promise. Two new characters (not the sulking Armand and pouting William—who can just sit there and think about what they’ve done until I’m good and ready to listen to them should they deign to speak) just came out to play like they’d been there all the time. I wrote 1,800 words, and on a second day at the café, I managed another 2,000.

I’m still mostly unable to write at home (thanks, cat), but my head is no longer echoing like a new apartment without furniture or rugs while I wander around in it aimlessly. There are unpacked boxes in the corner to go through and interesting clutter lying about that needs to be assembled into something usable. And I’m also channeling my rage at current events into this new space instead of trying to keep it clean and nice for company, so things could get interesting.

I still don’t know where or when the story takes place or any of the specifics of the plot beyond a very vague beginning and a fairly definite end (and, of course, a love story), but I’m hopeful that those will come. I might not have any idea where I’ll end up, but at least I have a beginning. Sometimes you just have to piece together a bunch of disembodied parts and apply a little voltage and see what happens. Even if what you end up with turns out to be a little misshapen, the important thing is that it’s alive.

Back to the Beginning

This week is only halfway through and already it's been full of ups and downs.

Monday started out in typical Monday fashion: bad. Rejections for writers are a part of the process and a way of life. Usually, I can brush them off and move forward without thinking about them. This one threw me for a loop and sent me into a tailspin. There's no rhyme or reason for it and I can't explain why. The knee-jerk reaction is "what's wrong with it?" "there's nothing wrong with my baby" then after a couple hours, the reaction morphs to "I'm a total crap writer and should just give it up right now" But, the good news is it was a revise and resubmit so after several hours spent in "woe is me" mode, I put it away.

Thank goodness for my CP who let me beat myself up for about half a minute then shoved me back on the horse.

Tuesday was better because I finished a historical/paranormal novel I'd been working on since May. 64K of new shiny words, and yeah it needs some self-editing and a few once overs before it'll be ready to be sent out into the world but it's still a great accomplishment, and a huge sigh of relief.

So, what now?

Back to the beginning. All kinds of beginnings.

Today I'll be taking the rejected story out, picking it apart, injecting it with new scenes, cutting some others, sending it out to my awesome CP, having a cow when she says "no, not yet" and starting again until she gives me the thumbs up. LOL

Such is life.

But the best news? By week's end I get to start on a brand spanking new novel :-) This time will be a light, bouncy contemporary novel and after spending a couple months with a historical, I definitely need it :-) It's very exciting to start over. A fresh start doing something new feels wonderful. Of course, ask me how it's going a couple months from now and you might get a different answer. LOL

So, that's a day in the life of a writer. The good, the bad and the ugly. Thanks for listening.

Oh sure, every time I open that rejected story, I cringe. Somehow it takes more energy to re-work a story than to type it out the first time, but if the restructuring makes it better, great!

Gotta go. I've got a lot of work to do today. Make it a good one, folks :-)