Getting Back to Work

Scarlet fever. My kids had scarlet fever over the holidays, which I sort of thought went the way of ague and nervous fits and gout and chilblains and all those other 19th century diseases. Apparently it’s just another manifestation of the strep bacteria, and I got it in my eyeball, which I also didn’t know was possible.

Between all of that, my own sickness, my, uh, 30th birthday, the holidays and all the usual end-of-the-old-year-beginning-of-the-new-one stuff, I lost about three weeks of writing.

And after three weeks away from my latest book, I had no desire to go back. None. It just seemed like a whole lot of work.

(And writing, if you’ve missed any of my previous posts about it, really is just tons and tons of work. It is not sitting around eating bonbons and waiting to get inspired and then dashing off a few pages and heading to the spa)

Nothing was getting me inspired. Nothing could induce me to sit down and type. Not even a muffin.* The roadblocks and negativity built up to the point where I began to wonder if maybe it was a terrible book, or the muse had left me, or maybe I needed to take a break for a couple of years.

Finally I gave myself a drop-dead date to begin again and opened the computer and stared at what I had previously written.

Oh, yeah.

I remember it now.

As I read over what I had written it all came back. The world—every detail— seamlessly engulfed me. I slipped into the skin of the main character with no problem. The dialogue between her and one of the more comic characters made me smile.

As mentioned in a previous post (http://lizbraswell.livejournal.com/104044.html), if I’m writing well, I am completely transported that other world.

And this world I was rediscovering was a nice one. One very much like our own with a bit more action and supernatural happenings. And tentacles.

So I’m writing again, warp speed. Glad to be back.

I just needed to be reminded how much I enjoyed it.



*My absolute favorite quote about writing, from the movie Adaptation:
“To begin... To begin... How to start? I'm hungry. I should get coffee. Coffee would help me think. Maybe I should write something first, then reward myself with coffee. Coffee and a muffin. Okay, so I need to establish the themes. Maybe a banana-nut. That's a good muffin.”