the SS Novel 2012 is underway

This past Sunday I officially started a new novel. [Fireworks!] It had been so long since I was last drafting (what you call it when you’re facing the Blank Page a.k.a. the pulling stuff out of your bum phase) that I felt the need to prop myself with lots of, um, props. The last six months I’ve been in editing mode, so this was getting back on a bike I hadn’t ridden in a while. I left the kids with Paul, went to the library, got a chai (it’s a very cool library), got out a brand new yellow legal tablet and a brand new jetstream pen, all the trappings of “writer” haha, and I started.

Of course, none of these fetish items are required to write a novel. But it was nice anyway, like playing pretend. You have to have the right hat and maybe a hook or at the very least a bandana to play Pirate. I needed a chai and a legal tablet to play Writer, and I needed to play Writer in order to help myself remember how to Write.

It was great! Like [smacks forehead], oh yeah! I like doing this! A lot! Writing makes me happy!

I have had to relearn this so many times, it’s embarrassing. I just forget. I get distracted, I work on the publishing side, I get busy, and I start getting depressed. Why do I write? Why do I bother? I start moping and feeling pitiful and I FORGET that it’s all because I’m not writing. Basically, if I don’t write, I get symptoms. And they aren’t pretty. Writing keeps depression at bay. I don’t know why, it just is. Graphomania perhaps?

But whatever. I’m back! I’m doing it! 1000 words a day, the old mantra, taken down from the shelf and dusted off.

As a terrific champagne bottle smash against the hull of SS Novel 2012, I got a lovely, lovely fan letter yesterday from a reader of Toby Streams the Universe who had really liked the book and the characters and wanted to tell me so. That was EXTREMELY PLEASANT.

Anyway, I back in the familiar confusion and craziness of making shit up. Inventing something out of nothing. Fun! Hard. Fun! Hard.