There's Always the Next Time

I started writing again last night.

For those of you (who are you?) keeping track, it's been almost three months since I put hands to keyboard for anything other than a tweet or Facebook status update.

Sure, sure--moving, unpacking, stress, stress, company, stress. But it was always there, niggling--you know?

Here's the part I forgot: intimidation.

Damn, it's intimidating to've been out of the game for this long. I've had this great want to start revisions on my novel FOUR, but it's all been in my head. And sure, I did tons of plotting and planning--made that part pretty easy when I wrote my skeleton plot outline for the revision. I even figured out how to capitalize on the best parts of what my draft holds and keep a lot of the good stuff. That's big for me, as I'm usually a "scrap it all and start over" type of reviser. Obviously, I've never actually revised anything.

So I'd been psyching myself out for the past two days about actually starting writing again. See, I need to gut the first third of the draft and write all new material.

But that involves...writing.

Eventually, I lit my candles, started my A Perfect Circle station on Pandora, and figured out a decent starting sentence. After all, it doesn't really matter how great it is this time. This is just another draft, isn't it. And there's always the next round of edits. The perfect image that will eventually come.

Everything's a placeholder, until it isn't.

Yeah.

How about this instead?:

That's Ben Bass, who currently stars as Sam Swarek on one of my favorite TV shows, Rookie Blue. He's not a classically handsome dude, but his character is smokin'. Sexy, funny, brooding, yet intensely passionate. The whole package. He's basically the man I'd like my male protagonist to be. With a ponytail.

Happy writing, friends.