The first word is the hardest #writerproblems

My horoscope today courtesy of Yahoo: “Your overactive imagination acts as both a blessing and a curse today.”

Duh.  Amirite, writers?  Damn skippy I’m right. THAT’S EVERY DAY, YAHOO.

In the last five months I’ve finished major edits on TWO books (okay one and a half since one is a novella but still…that’s a lot of revising so quit crapping on my party and let me have this). I’m not complaining. I love the world in my novels but it’s been a while since I’ve created something brand spanking new.

And that’s got me dithering, fretting, my mind spinning in circles.  Because once again I must face – dun dun dun – the blank page. The vast whiteness. The mocking, blinking cursor that, as one writer told me, hisses “you suck” and “don’t bother, you’ve got nothing left” to her. I advised her to exorcise the demon clearly haunting her computer. My cursor isn’t quite the asshole hers is but it’s not warm and cuddly, either.

For me, and I’d bet for other writers, too, it’s all about choosing one of the literally endless possibilities and following it through to The End. Panic freeze. What are my characters' scars? How does that impact their actions? Is it strong enough? What about their families? Is a talking horse stupid?

Here’s how it’s been going:

I start to noodle their backstory. Is she all quiet grace? Angsty? Is she simmering with rage?

(I go out and weed like a maniac.)

He’s coming across as a dick, gotta fix that.

(I grab the weird duster and knock down those damn cobwebs in my house.)

Conflict, conflict, conflict. So many to choose from. Dammit, pick one already.

(Start eying my…what’s the word, oh yeah DISGUSTING office, piles of papers teetering on the desk, pieces of stuffing from a dog toy scattered over the filthy carpet. Hell no. I know, I’ll write a blog post.)

Choosing is hard. And not a word written on that story.

Yet.

Today is the day I put the first of about 7000 words on the screen. There’s a deadline but those make me focus, much to my surprise.  I found that out doing NaNoWriMo last year.

Oh, wait, Jason DeRulo’s new song is playing. brb.

Okay, I’m back. What was I talking about? Oh right, focus, deadlines.  

Today I stop dithering and choose. It may change as I go, probably will. The (hopefully, fingers crossed please gods let it be the) end product, the core story, of my novel Omega Rising is very different from the first draft. And by different I mean better, more focused, clearer in the goals of the characters, thanks to my awesome editor Cori and the helpful advice from my talented CP Lauren *waves and blows kisses*

So if my first draft sucks HAHAHA. Let me start over. When my first draft sucks I will fix it. If I make her a quiet thinker and she needs to be a ball-buster then I fix it. If the plot is weak I’ll fix it. If it can't be fixed I’ll scrap it and choose another.  Well, I’ll cry and THEN choose another.

So here I go again. Look out Untitled Story for the Rough Edges anthology (mmm, cowboys), you're about to get chosen SO hard.

WRITE ON.