A Turtle Tale

After everyone ate dinner, I opened Scrivener and found a place to start writing. I added maybe five sentences. They're garbage, they took an hour of procrastinating to write, but they're something. The story moved forward. Then I went to bed.

Once upon a time, I wrote. All the time. I kept a paper notebook and a laptop handy and I used both constantly. I never finished anything, but I started lots of things. I wrote my million words. That was twenty years ago.

I got a job, I bought a house, I adopted a couple cats. I stopped writing because I was busy and exhausted and I never finished anything. What was the point?

One summer I had some time, and I was curious if I had matured enough to finish something. I wrote Star of Justice. A monster book that poured out of me in a few months (and then got polished for years). I finished it. I felt like a genius, and a real writer, and I was satisfied.

I wrote Daughter of Anasca. It was much harder, but I did it. I felt like a genius, and a real writer, and I loved my second book as much as my first, although in different ways.

I tried to write the next book, but I couldn't gain traction. I couldn't pick a plot. My new job took far more energy than my earlier job. My couple of cats turned into a demanding clowder, and they didn't like it when I wrote. I remembered how obsessive I was writing my books, and I didn't want to fall into that pit again, even though I have no reason not to because everyone else I know is moving on with their lives without the Turtle.

I stopped writing. For years. I let my brain atrophy with computer games and weekend TV commercials.

Last night, I started writing. It was hard. It felt horrible. I didn't like it. I did it anyway. I'm going to keep doing it until I have a crappy first draft that I'll shove in a drawer for a year while I write the next crappy first draft.

Somewhere in there, I hope I start enjoying it again. Or maybe the world will end and save us all. Might as well write while I'm waiting.

Push button. Receive bacon.