Writing for real

My pen is mov­ing every day now. I have filled near­ly two dozen comp book pages in the last month (a prodi­gious rate for me at least), and the ink bot­tle is grow­ing notice­ably emp­ti­er. I am actu­al­ly writ­ing!

It is far too soon for me to book an agent. These are just words I am scrib­bling; they have no greater form. I have not set an unfail­ing course to actu­al­ly write some­thing. But the words are flow­ing and behind them, impos­si­ble to miss now that I am look­ing for it, is a soul return­ing to life, wak­ing from tor­por, start­ing to stretch and move. That soul is my own, and I am glad to claim it once again, to give it life and let it enliv­en me, to be me.

In the short term I can expect this burst of out­put to result in more posts on this and oth­er blogs that I may be involved with. I hope that increased and steady post­ing will lead to enlivened read­er­ship, renewed feed­back, and build a loop of encour­age­ment that will help me keep mov­ing the pen and press­ing the keys.

In the long term? Well, dare I say that I might real­ly have a book in me? Thoughts are tak­ing shape, themes are emerg­ing through repeat­ed drafts, free-writ­ing is bring­ing for­ward real strands of nar­ra­tive, and ideas that have pre­vi­ous­ly lain untouched are being tak­en up and added into the weav­ing. As Woody Allen has said, “80 per­cent of suc­cess is show­ing up,” and that is cer­tain­ly hold­ing true for my efforts to be a writer.

So I will con­tin­ue to show up, to push the pen, to keep the ink wet on the page. I will keep on writing.