Friday, May 29, 2009

After fifteen months away...

I've come to realize that I've neglected my little corner of the web for some time. With my creative juices again flowing, I feel it's time to pick the torch back up and get some things out there.

In the last three months, I've rediscovered my (literary) voice after a year of stagnation. It was answered with the drive to create a space of my own, an area in which I can create my worlds in the quiet my personal creative process necessitates. After this came a steamroller of writing - twenty thousand words, good words, in forty-five days - and the requisite excitement that one needs to complete a massive work of fiction.

This spark of creativity came because of one reason: I realized that I hadn't done so much as open a book in two years. Now, to some, that might not sound like a huge deal. But for a writer...well, that's almost beyond forgivable. How can you advance your own craft without exploring what you may or may not be doing wrong, what ways you might or might not want to change, how many plots may or may not have been done before? Yet this was what I'd done to myself - expecting my mind to imagine new and creative galaxies without feeding it, like asking a mountain climber up a slope without the proper gear to complete the task. It just doesn't work.

So I dove back into reading, as well. In the last two months I've read twelve full-length novels, during breaks at work and time off. It's a daily thing, and it must be, or else you'll fester. For those of you who don't write, just know that this is perhaps the most important action you must perform daily, and that includes sitting in front of the keys or blank sheet with a pencil in your hand. Read. A lot. Enjoy it. Analyze it. Build off it.

So now I'm writing again. And submitting. Hopefully soon there'll be a sale. Definately soon I'll be finishing the first draft of my second novel, Silus, the strange story of a man and his beloved dog. And I look forward to the editing process as it inevitably works its way forward.

So for now I'm off, though I hope not for long. For those who've served as support and inspiration to me, thank you, you know who you are. And I'll be back soon to post my thoughts and opinions in the form of reviews of some of the newer books I've been reading.

And I'm quite excited about that.