The mysterious writer – part deux

I've mentioned in my 2015 review that I've started work on my first novel. I've been inspired to start writing fiction. Moi! I remember dreaming about this as a teen, but was never able to do it until now.

I re-watched a TED talk the other night looking for inspiration for a challenge of some sort to do next. The speaker talked about doing something new for 30 days. If there's something you've always wanted to do, just try it out for 30 days. In his talk, he mentioned one of his challenges was to write a novel in 30 days (50,000 words). He would make sure to write 1667 words a day. He admitted the quality of his writing wasn't that great, but he was proud for having done it anyway. It seemed like an amusing challenge. So I started (before I decided not to take on new challenges).

I lasted for about 4 days. And what I wrote would never come close to pass for a novel. However, as I was writing whatever popped into my head, I stumbled upon an idea. The next day, I came back with more thoughts on how the story should go. And the day after that. And now it's pretty much always on my mind. The first night I officially started writing my novel, I wrote more than my required 1667 words.

What have I been writing about? Well, I figured since I tend to overthink and some of these thoughts turn into fantasies and these fantasies are already bouncing around in my head, I might as well put them to good use as inspiration for my novel. If some aspect of my life hasn't turned out as I've dreamt, I can write it right.

Does this mean I'm not happy? Not at all! I would say I'm generally happy with my life. That doesn't stop me from fantasizing about how things could've been.

Right is how things actually are, I'm sure. I do believe that I'm living the life I was meant to live. Even though not everything has been exactly how I wanted it to be, I'm where I'm supposed to be surrounded by the people I'm supposed to be surrounded by. However, it occurred to me that I could write out the scenarios I've thought of. Embellish interactions. Omit some. Get the "happy ending" I wanted. If it wasn't happening in real life, I'd make it happen in fiction. That's totally within my control! I can even make my character's life even more dramatic than mine.

I'm glad that the novel writing block is out of the way. I'd say that writing whatever came to mind without censoring or editing was the best way to get started (also to keep going... so far). If all goes according to plan, you might get to read it by the end of the year.

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