Starting over: with the most essential ingredient in a writing life.

March. The first month that sounds like it might have Spring in it. Like mayyyyybe we are done with winter and colds and flu and all that frozen-toe nonsense. And it strikes me as a wonderful month to begin something.

Maybe even something kinda BIG.

For me, March holds two big beginnings: in a couple of weeks, I'll reopen my trilogy and start revising. Always a big deal. 

And then, obviously, I've restarted this blog, setting off in an updated and refreshed direction. New ideas, new look, and more clarity on topics and content ideas...

Fresh starts. Mmm. Doesn't that just get the blood going?

... And the fears yapping??

Starting something new, or restarting a current project, or taking a new turn, or updating an outlook--all those big beginnings and microbeginnings that are part of the process--they're all a big invitation for the fear monkeys to come clamoring.

Right? Right??

Hence the refreshed title of the blog: this talk about the lionhearted writing life. 

It's only recently that I've realized that courage is what stands at the crossroads of a strong writer's heart and a strong writer's skill. It takes a whole bunch of being brave to write well. Heck, it takes courage even to practice until you can write well.

For that matter, courage is at the crossroads of anything that is worthwhile. Any new direction that you're called to take.

Now that I know guts are so important to my writing life, I see things differently. A lot of things. 

I value courage more. I try to seek it out, strengthen it where I do find it, and invite it to go a bit deeper. I want to be crazy-brave when it comes to writing. When it comes to anything worth doing.

What is it that you're beginning?

Maybe you're teetering on the edge, not sure if you're going to go forward or step back. Or maybe you're in deep mid-project--which itself has a thousand small beginnings. A million tiny starts. (New chapter, new resolve, new thread, new attempt, new schedule, new routine, new week, new--)

Beginning anything takes courage.

And courage... well, maybe it gets a bit easier with community. Maybe it's a bit easier to leap when you're holding hands?

I'll be your beginning buddy, if you want. 

Let's make March the month of fresh starts.

Let's do this.

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Wanna keep reading? Check out The Comforting Power of Dumb Determination and The Truth about Terrible Writing.

Know a writer who could use this post? Please pass it along! We can all be brave beginning buddies! (And anything else alliterative!)

This is what happened to us when a story showed up.

It doesn't happen as much as it used to, but I still get that voice in my head at 1 a.m.

You know the voice?

It shows up with a list of things that I can't do anything about. And it rattles them off, accompanied by a dangerous amount of emotional pull and flawed reasoning. 

This voice is always convinced that it is right, it never lets me argue back, and it's sporting a t-shirt with the slogan "IT IS ALL DOWNHILL FROM HERE."

I haven't heard from this voice in a few months, but as of last Wednesday night, it's camping next to my pillow, knitting long unhappy scarves and crowing over my frustrations. 

It's really fun. Definitely has put me in the Christmas spirit.

It's been a long time since I've felt like my job is useless, but that's one of those happy little thoughts that show up at 1 a.m.

My family and I have been immersed in the medical world lately. I've learned to be so grateful for skilled nurses and doctors and surgeons: If you can wield an I.V. without traumatizing your patient, if you don't flinch at the word "catheter," and if you are compassionate on top of all that...

Well. You're a superhero. 

I have a long gratitude list right now. So many people, in so many different roles, have held my family together, given us the information and courage and support we needed. 

But it gets easy to think that everyone else is doing important work, while I somehow lost myself in a silly dream of putting words on pages.

The books that I'm writing--well, I love them. No matter what the 1 a.m. voice says, I still do love these stories. But they aren't important. You can't confuse my work with, say, a doctoral thesis. I'm writing about themes I love, absolutely, and this trilogy is for an age group (eleven-year-olds!) that I care deeply about, but the books are also very ...

Wacky.

(I'm secretly terrified that my friends will read them and then take five quick steps away from me. You can know me pretty well and never guess the kinds of things I'm writing about. Because... how do I put this... there are telepathic lizards in these books. I'm still surprised that they're in there, but, yup, that's what they are.

And there's a family of aristocratic assassins with funny names, and a whole town devoted to jam-making, and these spiders that became really important to the plot somehow, and a whole troop of monocle-wearing superpowered who-knows-whats. 

It's goofy, is what I'm saying.)

Right. So I've had a few interactions with an insanely gifted surgeon, and then I go back to my desk and write about lizards. And then I stare at the ceiling past 1 a.m. wondering what on earth I'm doing with my life.

Do you have these kinds of nights?

But then I remembered one very important moment, and it shut the voice right up.

See, we were in my mom's hospital room. Waiting with her as they tweaked her pain medication, waiting for her to recover just enough from the surgery to go home. We were looking out at the amazing view from the seventeenth floor. Letting her rest, grabbing coffee from the lobby, keeping each other company.

And then: we were reading out loud. 

My family has always read out loud to one another: something my parents were doing for us when we were kids, and none of us got around to outgrowing it. So my mom packed a lighthearted novel for her hospital stay, and Dad and I read it out loud.

And something funny happened. Instead of being overwhelmingly conscious of I.V. cords and hospital gowns, the smells of antiseptic, the sounds of the equipment in the room (I never knew hospital beds were so loud)... instead of all our worries about the surgery itself, and the outcome, and what the rest of recovery would be like, and if any other treatment was needed--

We all teleported. 

To 1930s England. To chauffeurs in uniform, to having tea and lemonade on the lawn, to entertaining the vicar. To frivolous women and pompous young men and imperious great-aunts. To thwarted love and silly mix-ups and endangered inheritances. It was one of those comedy-of-manners kinds of books, trivial and subtle and funny. 

The only thing I had to focus on was reading the very next sentence. Everything else faded away. Mom listened and rested. Dad and I wrapped ourselves up in the story. 

And at one point I looked up to see my mom's roommate standing there, listening to me read. She was holding onto her I.V. pole, with a feeding tube snaking into her nose, but she was with us in the 1930s, standing there in England, just for a little while. 

(She told us--in a beautiful accent that none of us could quite place--that she and her husband had been listening to us for a while, that it was lovely to overhear someone reading, instead of the noise of the TV. "There's a TV in here?" I said later, surprised. We had never even noticed.)

In other words--I tell this emphatically to the doubting voice in my head--in other words, books are still important.

Even when your family gets all shaken around and can't figure out what normal is for a while.

Even in a land of diagnoses and tests and results and lab reports and waiting, waiting, waiting.

After all, anything that can make two women forget--even for an instant--that they are in a lot of pain; anything that can move a group of people over a continent and back about eight decades; heck, anything that can keep me from realizing I'm in a hospital--

Well. That's a very powerful force. Whether the story reminds you of green lawns and sparkling lemonade, or whether it's populated with aristocratic assassins and monocled crime fighters: Stories are important.

And maybe there is no such thing as too silly, when even the silly stories can remind us who we are.

We the adventurers.

I'm one of those people who hates being late: I feel like my face is melting off when I'm late. And yet, it happens. Like right now. Right now, I'm technically late. Very, very late. 

I started NaNoWriMo on day ten. *face melts*

If you haven't heard of it before, NaNoWriMo is a cult of insane people who craft a work of fiction under impossible circumstances.

Well, okay, that's not the technical definition. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month. This month, actually. Participating in NaNoWriMo means: You write a novel of 50,000 words (or more) in a mere thirty days.

Honestly, it's brilliant. With that extreme deadline, you just have to get the heck over yourself. You write really, really badly. And then you write some more. It's exciting, freeing, and a whole lot of fun. Plus, you have the comradeship of zillions of other writers--equally bonkers, equally caffeinated, churning out their own sometimes-great sometimes-terrible prose. 

It's a rush.

And super difficult. Even when you have all thirty days. Showing up on day ten, saying here I am, writers! and then kicking off your project? Not exactly a winning strategy.

But, if you've been following along with me over the last few weeks, you already know that 1) I'm not always sane, 2) I like writing at a breathtaking pace, and 3) I have to crank out the third book of this trilogy!

So I had a long conversation with my calendar. I said: Oh gosh. I have basically six weeks before the holidays really get swinging. Remember holidays? All the mental space I usually reserve for writing gets taken over until I'm all like, "Who's a writer? Do I know any writers?"

That, I said to my calendar, is what happens. 

My calendar is very stoic. But it did point out that six weeks is six weeks, and I couldn't argue with that. It nudged my calculator under my fingertips and said, what would you have to do to finish that novel in six weeks?

WRITE A LOT OF WORDS. REALLY FAST. 50,000 words in the first three weeks. That kind of fast. 

So I dove in. I signed up. And today, I cracked open a fresh spiral notebook, clicked a new pen, and got to work. The first twelve pages on Book Three. I added my word count (2940!) to my NaNo page. And it informed me that at this rate, I would finish my novel sometime in April. 

Ha! I shouted. Ha! said my calendar. Ha! said my calculator. Wanna bet?

I'm gonna have the first 50,000 words done by the end of November, and write the rest during the first three weeks of December.

And then I'll be done. And probably really dizzy. Because this will be a longer book than Book Two--probably--with one less week to do it in. Hence the dizzy. But not so dizzy that I can't string a few lights, sing a few songs, and cook some seriously awesome food.

Food. Wait. That reminds me. There are a few obstacles between now and then. Like, Thanksgiving. Oh, and my family is dealing with a scary medical diagnosis at the moment. There could be a surgery between now and then. Oooh, and this: I just started a new workout program to deal with the impending good-food explosion. Not to mention: have I actually remembered enough words after finishing the last book to be in good shape for this one?

So maybe I started hyperventilating last night, just a wee bit. 

What's your experience with trilogies? Does the third book ever start in a really happy place? Not as far as I know. The characters are not all full of high-fives and back-slaps and party hats. The ones I'm thinking of--The Return of the King and Mockingjay are fresh in my mind--are pretty dang grim on page one. 

Which is about how my third book starts too.

My poor main character. Chapter One? Is basically a whole herd of crazy that she could never have predicted. It starts with major difficulties and ends up much worse. She is reeling by page twelve.

So I gave her a pep talk. And because I'm a writer, I wrote it down. And then because I'm reeling too, I read it to myself.

And heck. I don't know where this Monday finds you, but maybe you need this too. It's a fairly multipurpose pep talk, after all. So here it is. 

Remember who you were at the start of this whole thing.

At the beginning of book one, page one. Yeah, life was quiet and "fine," but you knew you were made for more than that. You wanted to know if you could do great things. If you could tackle challenges. Adventures.

You can, and you will. Even though you don't see that now. 

Sometimes bravery means, you don't let the shadows swallow you up.

Sometimes bravery means holding one true thought in your mind, and focusing on that. Letting that truth keep you company.

Bravery means not giving up. Not giving in. 

You're already so much stronger than you were way back in that first chapter, two books ago. Even though you feel small now, look at how much you've grown.

And oh, I'm already planning the ending of this story, and your last page is good. Hard won, but good. You will be so tall and so brave that you will barely recognize the girl from page one.

Don't give up. You really were made to face challenges, to become stronger.

Go and be the adventurer you are. 

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There's really nothing I could say that would dignify this.

Probably I am very, very sick, because I'm taking a break from writing by writing.

Sitting here, thinking that through...

Nope. Still doesn't make sense.

Brain and hands are all rather numb, but hi, words! Hello!!

Look at all your nice little shapes on this white screen.

(I have said I get book drunk, right? Yup. And word drunk. Drugged by the sheer momentum of one sentence after another. Whew. Dizzy.)

Last week, I crossed the midpoint of my novel's plot. And then in the last two days, I've cranked out 31 pages, putting me at 261 pages total.

Which sounds pleasantly book-ish.

It also means I'm staggering around the house grinning at everyone, but I keep forgetting what I'm doing or saying. I'm not exactly present.

Instead I'm trying to keep in my mind that image of the strange new city I invented. Trying to keep the pace of that conversation those two characters were having. Trying to get those last nuances sorted into words. Tapping phrases into place.

I made the mistake of thinking about my book while folding laundry, and one article of clothing has absolutely vanished. A pair of black tights, now nowhere to be seen.

I'm convinced they got sucked into my story somehow, and when I'm writing I'll find a pair of tights, surfacing in the midst of an unlikely sentence. 

This is the stage in the game when I'm surprised to see human beings who have three dimensions, instead of two. I feel like we should all be made up of words, sliding around in paragraphs, tumbling across pages. Skin is such a startling thing. Fingers and toes and noses in profile... 

(You think I'm kidding, maybe? But every time I pass a mirror, I'm like oh!! Look! I have a face!)

Momentum. Gosh I love it. It is my best friend when I'm in the midst of a project.

It doesn't mean that I necessarily know what I'm doing... It just means that every page, every scene, every chapter feels like I'm running down a hill. You can forget about picking up your feet and putting them down again (and you're not super aware of any obstacles--say, trees--that loom ahead).

Instead you just concentrate on flying, just relish the feeling of your hair slapping around your face.

The only danger (besides the trees) is when this delirious, daydreaming, word-drunk girl gets her hands on a calendar. That sense of word-urgency meets those blank little boxes, and I start dreaming dangerous dreams. I start thinking violent writing thoughts, like:

I could write the last pages today. Probably I have 180-ish still to go.

I could totally do that.

Okay, okay. I could take tomorrow too, I guess. A day and a half? Absolutely. 

So what if my hands are sore? So what if I'm only barely coherent in this blog post? So what if I don't know what happens next in the novel? We find out by writing! Let's keep writing. 

MORE WORDS! FEED THE DRAFT!

I think my all-time record was 45 pages in a single day. (After which I basically fell over on the floor with my four paws in the air, as rigor mortis set in.)

So 180 is a heck of a stretch. And okay, I guess I know it's not possible. I guess.

Kinda.

But it just feels possible, right? Right? You think it's possible. I can totally tell. You're nodding at me.

OH MY GOSH I COULD. Oooh. Let's go finish it. Let's just finish the whole book. RIGHT NOW.

Yes. YES. Okay. Excuse me.

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There is nothing to prove and everything to imagine. -- Eugene Ionesco

I am not epic.

At the risk of sounding like a snark (which I am, so I guess that's fair), this rampant use of the word epic is starting to grate. 

Probably I've just spent too much time on the Internet. If you keep clicking all the links of here is how to become amazing at writing ... well, you hear a lot of advice about being epic.

Make it epic. Write at an epic level. It needs to be epic.

And I kept nodding while reading this, yes, yes, yes, I want to write something EPIC. But today I snapped or maybe just got tired. 

I know we need an all-purpose word to capture amazing/rad/fantastic/awesome, and since it's all purpose, we go through it really fast. Use it a bunch, wear it out, toss it, and find a new one. The word life cycle: I am familiar with you.

But all this hype about becoming epic, becoming legendary... it's a little wearing? 

So I want to bellow back at these articles, something like, I sing of the rage of Achilles!! And then I'll blabber about gods and monsters and heroes, about metamorphoses and ill-fated love stories, and then I'll make up a joke about a satyr.

Pfft. Satyrs. 

All this to say, at the moment I am profoundly ordinary. 

The draft (at 39,600 words) isn't quite at the slog stage, but ... slog threatens. The mad dash through the opening chapters has turned into more of a trudge. It's just plain old hard work, that's all, unraveling that skein of story every day, hoping I don't find a knot, a snarl, a fray, a break. 

Okay. Here's the honest truth. I have no idea what happens next. 

I've hassled my poor cast of characters through a fair series of early obstacles, and it's time for them to catch their breath--just long enough to hear how the stakes are higher than they knew, their enemy stronger, and their time to act shorter. 

And then I'll catapult them into . . .

Into . . . 

Hmm. 

The unepic writer scratches her head, wanders around her house, thinks about the laundry, and eats an apple. Thinks about those villains, and tries to chew more menacingly. 

I know there will be a mystery person in the next chapter or two. And I know there will be something of a prison break at the midpoint of the story. 

Prison break? I'm going to write about a prison break. Never mind that I wouldn't be able to break my own self out of a locked closet if I needed to.

Oh, and the climax of the whole story? Yeah. Complete mystery to me. Ditto the ending.

I am trying to remember that I knew this was coming. The wide blank howling fields of I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm remembering that my job is to just show up. To lighten my grip.

So I'm not hyperventilating. I'm just a little edgy. And anyone who screeches GO BE EPIC is asking for a cool reply involving centaurs.

The one good thing? Even though I've no clue what happens next in my story, my imagination is still firing on all cylinders. I keep seeing things that aren't actually there.

The lynx slinking across the street. A picture of buildings turned into a boy alone at a train station, a wall of raincoats behind him. I keep seeing shadowy shapes walking past my window. Little things flitting past at the edges of sight. I hear phantom footsteps all through the house.

If I wasn't actively drafting, this kind of thing would make me dial an emergency number or two. But for now, it means that my writerly brain is still churning up images, tossing out ideas, sparking new scenarios. Twisting what it sees into something intriguing.

So I'll show up. And I'll keep going. 

And write my way forward, one ordinary word at a time.

This post is about guts: spilling them, getting them, keeping them.

Writing fiction has its surreal moments. No surprise, right? After all, I'm immersing myself in an alternate reality. If I'm doing my job right, it should leak out and get tangled up in real things.

Today I worked up a nine-page section where my eleven-year-old protagonist is facing the (really really really mean) antagonist. And I have to write both of them. As realistically as I can.

So on the one hand, I'm pulling up as many memories of being scared out of my brain cells as I can remember... What does it feel like, to be paralyzed with panic, but trying to brazen your way out of it anyway? What's it like to be small, and realize that the world is bigger and worser (yes, worser) than you knew? 

And then, I switch sides, and create the most menacing, monstrous, cruel, and unpredictable character I can muster up today. So: it worked. He's awful.

On my writing break, I ran to look at myself in the mirror: checking my face for scales or wicked yellow eyes or... I don't know. VILLAIN TEETH. Because who walks around in society with this kind of thing chuckling away in her head?

The scene itself worked well enough for a first draft. But now I'm a bag of emotions. I have well and completely freaked out my inner eleven-year-old. I want to break into my story and go apologize to everyone. I'm all jittery and anxious.

I can't tell if I need a gin & tonic or a teddy bear. 

Meanwhile, in real life, the business side of my brain has been tallying up my word count each day, looking at where I'm at on my "outline" (can I call it an outline if it's basically blank?), and where I'm hoping to end up.

The good news is that I've cranked out 27,101 words in 12 days, which is none too shabby. That translates to over 72 typed pages, or 106 by hand. (Because I write it first by hand. All part of my plan to burn out my wrists and fingers before I'm 35. Stay tuned on that.) 

72 pages! That's some heft. Send up balloons! Sing songs!

Okay, but the bad news is, that's 12 days out of a scheduled 30, and I'm, um, a fifth the way through my outline. (You can laugh. It really is funny.) 

Do I change the schedule and double my time, or amp up my daily totals, or both, or just let it play out, or ....

Okay. I decided. I want the gin & tonic AND the teddy bear.

And if that all doesn't have me uncertain enough, I'm dreaming up a bunch of big, exciting projects to shape the future of this blog. I hope it will be awesome, I hope it will be fun to follow along. I hope you really like it. 

I also hope I don't pass out from sheer nervousness.

So I made this sign. And I'm gonna plaster it to my forehead.

Or, at least, put it above my desk. 

I need it. My main character needs it. And I thought, heck. Maybe you'd want to see it too.

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It's more than just a nice idea. I've heard over and over again: if you fake fearlessness, you eventually end up ... fearless.

Which sounds like a good direction to go.

And that's what I'm going to be doing around here. 

You too? High five. Let's do it together.

Let's go be brave.

How to keep going.

The first bout of writing momentum has worn off: that first big oomph that carries me over the hurdle of the deaf-and-dumb blank pages, over the hurdle of it's-been-too-long-since-I've-done-this. 

The first few days of a draft are a brass band clanging through the heart, and all the trumpets are blaring, YOU CAN DO IT! 

But now it's week two. I've waded over 13,000 words into this story. And while there's still a fair amount of oompah-oompah going on, I'm also faced with the general suckiness of the first draft.

The characters are first draft characters, which means they are shrill, they don't argue enough with each other (or, terribly, all they do is argue), or sometimes they drop out of the story all together. They move in fits and starts, jerking around, and I get into hovering-author mode, meaning I write breathtaking sequences such as: She stood. She moved near the door. She bit her lip. She sat down again. 

This makes for thrilling fiction.

Not to be outdone, the settings are first draft settings. I've scrounged around in my imagination and come up with a few dusty props: some old trees leftover from a deleted chunk of a different novel; a tent that I imagined up for half a short story a few years ago; and then a weird taxidermy deer that appeared out of nowhere but seemed useful after I brushed off the cobwebs...

In other words, I'm blocking out the story in big broad strokes. The details are pretty darn hazy, which means the writing fills up with adverbs and adjectives: the discount construction paper and paste of the fiction world. 

I begin each session by rereading what I wrote yesterday, which means I'm all grounded in my storyworld again. Yay.

... But which also means that my toes are still curling from the awkward word choice and totally goofy dialogue that came out of no human mouth ever, not for this story or any other. 

I get discouraged, is what I'm saying. 

And I feel very sure that the knack for dishing out good words--if I ever had such a knack--has completely left me. The talent-o-meter readings are negative.

So it's good to remember this quote. (Yes! A quote! You knew where this was going.)

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Well, that is all kinds of cheering.

It's not about busting out beautiful prose on the first try, but more about being so darned stubborn and bullheaded that I will keep practicing, and practicing, and practicing.

Stretch out my toes, from that strenuous toe-curling, and then practice some more. 

It's too easy to take a look at the crappiness of a first draft, sling my desk chair through my computer screen, and decide on another career.

But I think I'll be stubborn. I think I'll keep practicing.

I think I'll stick with this one. 

The most important talent might be the talent for practice itself. -- Atul Gawande

Opening day.

That's right, it was today: Day one, chapter one, page one, line one, take one.

I love a good kickoff.

The writing was extremely workaday. The sentences clunked a bit, shuffling forward in stop-start fashion. But those were my characters on that page, picking up the pieces after Book One, and deciding where and how they will start this sequel.

I planted some nice little tension bombs, I pushed my main character into confrontation, I threw in a surprise, and oh, I revenged myself on my own worst-ever piano teacher.

All in a day's work.

Rather amazed that the terror monsters didn't line up for this morning's drafting session. Maybe part of what kept fear at bay was that I focused on telling my own self a story.

Isn't that what we are really doing, when we make anything at all? Don't we make the art we want to see, and write the books we want to read? 

While I hope to goodness that this story entertains other people someday, it starts by entertaining and delighting me. (Though it feels a little self-serving to scribble a sentence that makes me snicker, or to slam-dunk an image that makes me grin at my pens and desk and window, as if they're all applauding.)

And so yes, there is plenty to fix after day one. But there will always be plenty to fix.

So I had a little dance party of one, and I might even have clapped and shouted a bit. Celebrating good beginnings, first days, the first ten pages written, and the realization that:

Before it can be the book a reader can't put down, it has to be the story that I can't put down. The story that grips and energizes me, first of all.

Which means I'm in for a load of fun over the next six weeks. Hard work, and deep crazy fun.

Jiggety jig. (Home again.)

I handed my passport and declaration form to the U.S. Customs officer, and he asked me, "So how do you make a living?"

Which is my favorite question, especially from scary-faced men in super official uniforms. 

I said in a rush, "Well, it's not actually a living, I'm a writer, writing novels, but, yeah, I'm not paid for it or anything. Not published. Still learning. Kind of." 

At which point he scanned my passport and said, "It'll pay off."

He gave my passport back and I took it and sort of floated down the corridor.

It will pay off. The scary man said so. Which is SUPER news since I'm starting a new book on Monday, right? Right.

I met that Customs official on the way back from Bermuda. I spent a week and a half on that tiny island with pink beaches and sharp sunlight and mopeds zipping about and playing card games at night with the doors open so we could hear the waves. 

So good to be away for a while, good to let that to do list shrink and atrophy a bit, right? 

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This is the between week: post-vacation, and pre-drafting. Full of unpacking and laundry and returning emails. All that good catch-up stuff.

But I have to admit, I also envisioned a kind of super-charged version of me, running around on all that vacation energy and mid-Atlantic sunshine, getting some long-neglected projects taken care of before the new project starts...

Instead I'm fighting off the cold that the guy sitting in 11B gave me. (Thanks for that, mister. Three hours of being coughed on? I finally succumbed.)

Spent today in pajamas and my favorite pair of socks (they are ten years old, don't tell anyone), pottering around the house and sneezing. Ruffled my notes for the draft, looked over all those paragraphs hopefully. 

Not so much ultra-productive super-charge super-anything. 

Maybe that's okay. 

I always feel like I should have everything just so before starting a draft. That I should be ready for it, whatever ready means. I'm building an imaginative universe out of my brain on Monday morning at 10 a.m. ... how can anyone be ready enough for that?

Maybe it's better to just drink hot toddies and nap. Because the beauty of the novel and the crazy roller-coaster thrill of writing a new draft... it doesn't come from my having every thing perfectly in place.

It comes from the wildness of inventing something new, day after day after day.

So it's probably fine that I didn't deep clean the closet, clear the junk out of that one corner, or scrub down the bathroom. And whoops about that shopping and errand running I was going to do. 

This baby novel doesn't really depend on the rest of my life running perfectly.

All I actually need is a stack of blank notebooks and a very deep, persistent desire to tell myself a new story. 

And of those two, it's the desire that's more important.

Does that quote give you chills? It does for me. (Or maybe that's being sick. No, no, I think it's the quote.) Tenacity. Even the word sounds tough, full of muscle. 

I have the notebooks. A fresh crop of new pens. And I'm starting to hear my characters around every corner. 

Paper, pens, ideas, and tenacity.

So I guess I'm ready? 

Yeah. Totally. I'm ready.

Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lies solely in my tenacity. -- Louis Pasteur