Just one word at a time

The scariest thing happened to me this past weekend -- or maybe it was just sobering enough to feel very scary. It was innocent enough, I'd just popped into a local store to pick-up a particular brand of toothpaste to send to Chelsea at college (a story in itself, since yes, they do sell toothpaste in New Orleans!) when I found myself immediately drawn to a $3.00 sale table heaped to overflowing with BOOKS - stacks and stacks of beautiful books!!! It didn't take long to fill an arm with must-have tomes, but it was in flipping through the pages of a charming little book filled with literary quotes, that the shocker came crashing down. Because as I glanced over the words - beautifully composed and magnificently constructed sentences - the thing that all at once stuck my browsing eyes, was the horrifying conviction that I could no longer do this. That over the course of 6 months, when I'd foolishly ignored the keyboard, I'd forgotten how to write! Now, I'm not exaggerating here. Sure, I'm pretty certain I can sit down at any time and write SOMETHING, but what I'm referring to here is REAL writing. The kind of sentences we agonize over like a brain surgeon extracting a tumor.

In an attempt to be fair to myself, I haven't abandoned my novel in progress out of disinterest or laziness. It's more about temporary abandonment in order to immerse my confused brain into the convoluted mess that is book publishing and marketing. As my debut novel, The Secret of Lies, is a single season away from lowering the landing gear and hitting the runway, this other stuff seemed (and assuredly is) of immediate importance. As I pour over the particulars of "Early review copies, preparing media releases, book trailers, etc" the essential ingredient I've left out of my plan is the necessity to keep writing! An hour for this, an hour for that, it all needs to fit in. So to those who have this time management game sorted out - I'm impressed and enthusiastically applaud you! I, on the other hand, need an intervention.

And so, for the first time since June 2009, I sat before my trusty laptop computer this afternoon and opened the long sleeping file of said novel-in-progress and wrote. Squeaky, squeaky, rusty, rusty, popping up and down for snacks and refills of coffee, anything to avoid the screaming blank page. But then at last - a sentence (later deleted, but a nice collection of words nevertheless)! Followed then by a couple more, and at the end of an afternoon, two pages (which I will likely delete tomorrow.) And it feels good - great actually - to be wiggling back into my groove.