Groovin'

*Do you know how difficult it was for me to leave the 'g' off the end of my post title? I don't like apostrophe'ed-losing-letters kind of stuff. I'm a lamespice, I know.*

Anyway, I'm just about to sit down and rewrite/edit a chapter in Penalty Killer. I feel like I haven't even looked at it in months, but it has probably been more like several weeks. Maybe that's what I needed. Maybe I needed to distance myself from the piece. There for a while it felt like I had rewritten/edited so much Tallulah and Gennadi that I'd somehow become disconnected from them as characters and just too entwined in the get-it-done aspect.

And of course I never make it easy on myself when I go to do a rewrite. No, no, can't have any of that line by line read with minor structure and punctuation correction. I have to rewrite it, word by word, chapter by chapter until I have a whole other document. So 350 pages of work generally becomes about 700+ in the long run. I have tried to refine my habits but I feel awkward and out of place any other way.

Also, this brings me to the point of the post I had intended to write in the first place, you know that moment when you put a finished work away and out of your mind for so long that you get kind of excited to read it again when you happen to think of it again? Well, the other day I was going through Once Upon an Ocean Lullaby and Once Upon an Ocean Nightmare to see exactly where the story ends. As NaNoWriMo manuscripts, once November is over, I tend to forget them, but with NaNoWriMo looming in the not-so-distant future, I thought I'd get a leg up on the brainstorming part of the challenge.

So I'm skimming through chapters and I get so engrossed in the story it's as if I'm reading it for the first time, which I guess, essentially, I am, but you know what I mean. Not that the story was incredible or the writing was phenomenal. I just got caught up and every now and then, it amazes me just how creative my mind can be. Not just any mind, my mind.

Even as a writer, I never consider myself very creative. Most of my stories are rooted in the real world and I embellish details to suit my mood and the characters in the story. NaNoWriMo is different. I used that challenge to step outside my normal comfort zone of mainstream romantic fiction and dove face first into the supernatural/fantasy world.

And when I think about my work in those terms, about how creative and whimsical I can be, it makes me appreciate this writer's block I've had. I know, "appreciate" isn't exactly something a writer should say about writer's block, but hear me out. I live and breathe my stories, as I'm sure lots of writers do. It has to take a toll. It has to happen for a reason, right? (At least that's what I'm telling myself!)So, instead of being ashamed of my writers block and frustrated with it, I'm going to embrace it, accept it, and (gently) push myself to at least journal and brainstorm in between bouts of writer's block.