Happy Shiny Fictional People

One of my greatest struggles as a writer is overexcitement and undercommitment. Let me explain:

-Patrick was my first love. Every once in a while I think, I'll spend some time with Patrick. I'll empathize with him for a little while, I'll enjoy his beauty, I'll give him a few new adverbs and sharpen his motivation. I'll summarize his story in a way that makes everyone want to read it.
-The moment passes.

-I'll read a blog about how London's West End is currently full of jukebox musicals and I feel a sudden wild passion to create something new, to be backstage, to make something magnificent and start a theatrical renaissance.
-I get discouraged by how hard it is to break into theatrical writing. The moment passes.

-I listen to the 'soundtrack' for my WIP on the walk home. The songs sound like characters speaking to me. I feel every emotion that I want to see poured out on my pages. I'm ready to fire up the laptop the moment I walk in the door.
-Dinner, tidying the kitchen, putting in a load of laundry, watching an episode of Glee, phoning Mom, a little reading, bed.

-I read over my 'current projects' list. Five of them appeal to me and I'm excited to see where the stories and characters are going to go.
-Overwhelmed. Choose none of them.

There's a danger of magpieing - getting distracted by the latest shiny story idea but lacking the dedication to sit down with it for an hour. I want to be the Olympic swimmer of writing, constantly honing my craft, constantly using those muscles. What I seem to be instead is the retired gardener of writing, potting around in my mind-shed, which is like a mind-palace but smaller and underfurnished because I haven't given it the time and materials to achieve magnificence.

And that's just one writing struggle. Sometime when I'm feeling ambitious I'll have to write about plotting.

Wintersun

A ball of light that no man's right
Could capture, keep or hold
Since she's been gone the light glows on
But now the light is cold.

The mornings come with wintersun
And spread out ice like lace
The frost kiss is the morning's bliss
And summer knows its place.

The wintermoon, the Clair de Lune
Sings over seaside har
But she brings heat in each heartbeat
She is my winter star.

London

All the world was a stage, but London was the Big Top, the Albert Hall, Radio City, La Scala, the greatest show on earth.  London was the Globe.

 

 

Sometimes I quote myself.

Welcome

Hemingway said you should start a story by writing the truest thing you know.

I think you have no business starting a story without a killer first line.

Now that that's over with, welcome to the blog.