Scribbles & Munch

      A few days ago I finally finished editing the sequel/second half of the project I am currently pitching.  It took tremendous self-discipline to do this, because the Muse kept poking me in the back of the head with no fewer than four new story ideas!  But I forced myself to merely type out a hasty sketch of those plots, and then dutifully return to my editing.  And somewhere around 11pm on Saturday night, dry eyeballs aching in my sockets, my work was completed.
      "Yes!" I crowed, tossing my laptop onto the chaise.* "Tomorrow, I wake with the freedom to write whatever I want!  Anything, anything I want!"
     Can you guess where this is going?  If you said "writer's block," you're close, but that's not 100% accurate.  It's more like "writer's free fall."  After such a long period of intensive structure, the utter freedom to write anything and everything feels so loose it's almost disorienting.  I imagine it must be similar to getting used to space walking: zero gravity and one could move infinitely in any direction!

Ironically, literally writing in zero gravity is a problem NASA solved a long time ago.

      So while I do have things to write, the writing feels oddly...insubstantive.  Like I want to push off of something, but there's nothing to push, so I'm lacking momentum.  I have absolutely no measurement - internal or external - for whether or not I'm doing "good."  Which should be fine.  It should be better than fine!  For most of my life, writing has been about the joy of stories!  It was only when I got Publish Fever that I started thinking about "good" and "bad."  I want to just write for the love of it...I guess I'm just out of practice.
      So I guess that means I need MORE practice!  Oh, darn!  :-D



*No, I didn't literally toss it.  Yes, I do actually own a chaise.  It would be a very glamorous place to write, except the cat has decided no matter where I sit, I am nothing more than her cushion.