Stepping Lightly

I've been thinking about Frost and why it's so difficult for me to stop distracting myself from it. I love this story. I feel a real connection to it for many reasons. The characters are real to me. The situations are real. This is also a reason it's hard for me to get back into the way that I need to. That zone.

When I'm deep in the writing of a story which deals with issues that are close to my heart, press my buttons, piss me off or tear me up, it's like being a moth drawn to the flame because I spill a lot of my own blood on those pages.

Recently I told somebody that I have no filter for the horrible stuff I see in the news. This is true. I've always been a person who can't stand the suffering of others. I take it personally and I have never been able to change that. For better or worse. It's a part of who I am.

This story deals with a particular issue that I tried tackling before and failed. Each word that got me closer to the images in the story that I couldn't stand even imagining in my head, I felt myself cringing away from it. And if I'm pulling punches, it's not genuine. In short, it sucked.

This time, I have a little distance and characters I'm familiar with, so it's easier, but the issues still effect me in the same way. So as excited I am to get back into it, I still feel cuts from my own bloodletting in the process.

I won't waste my time or a reader's time writing shit I don't care about. I won't go through the motions. If I don't feel it deep where I live, I'm not doing it. So it's slow going. This story was written in a flurry of feverish imaginings because I had no time to edit myself. It's pretty raw.

This freaks me the hell out. So I try to take little breaks, but my mind is still in the story. I can't stay away. Moth to flame.

So it's slow going. But I'm moving forward with tentative, cautious steps right now. Eventually I know I'll get into the place, that zone, where there's no turning back and I'll take a breath and bullet through it. It's my way. And there's no way I'll abandon this story because although it's tough to finish, I love it.

It's just getting myself to that place where I allow my momentum to carry me through it. I'm still at the edge of the forest right now, peering through the branches and psyching myself up to take that trek back into the thickest, darkest part of it. I know where the creepy crawlies are. And to get to the other side of the woods, I have to go through them again.

During the writing of the first draft, I was pounding through it, discovering. It's scarier when you know what's waiting.

I think the next book will be about underwater macrame.