Most of us put down the pen for something. We get sick, or our child does. The holidays begin and take over our lives. A car accident distracts us, and we are drawn away from our work.
A combination of things took me from the page in December. Recovering from HOW TO TAME A WILLFUL WIFE’S launch combined with the final revisions for the next novel, LOVE ON A MIDSUMMER NIGHT, I took a week or two off. Then the holidays began in earnest, and my distraction was complete. The page was blank, and has remained so.
The holidays are over. I opened the window into the world I write in, the corner of Regency England that I currently call home, and wondered where to begin.
What brings us back to the page when everything else is calling us away? My characters bring me back, their need for their story to be told, their desire to finish polishing what we started over a year ago. What else? My love for the work? Sometimes that love is there, but hard to tap into. The joy I found in the same novel only a few weeks ago has retreated along with my focus.
So I find myself facing the page with little but ingrained discipline. Crafting and shaping a scene until it is better, ready to change words and phrases until what my characters’ truly mean to say, what they vividly experienced, is on the page. I think the work itself is the path back into it, taking in what is already there, and making it better as I struggle to honor not just my characters, but the novel itself. Slogging through a morass with only discipline and love to guide me is part of the work. So I stay in the chair, and do it, with the hope, the certainty, that the words I draw down will one day take flight and soar.
Thanks for this reminder, Christy, and blessings as you slog forward. The sun will break through again, and one day you’ll find yourself dancing into your writing room.
Sandy, I love that image! Dancing into my writing room indeed 🙂 Thank you for the sweet words and blessing
Christy – in the attempt to write what your characters want you to say – do you ever lose total track of time and place only to come to yourself unsure of where you are?
Gin, I do tend to lose myself in the story…I always know where I am, but I forget for long stretches of time anything but the keyboard and screen in front of me. 🙂