one small step for the Heartbreaking Work...

...one giant leap for me and my creative process.

the other day i wrote about that little voice that crowds you and demands to know, "who do you think you are?" and i decided to simply stand up and declare, "THIS is who i think i am, who i know i am!" and i just did it.

at first i was tempted to explore who that voice sounds like, who it resembles, where it came from and how long i've been letting it tag along. but i stared at those couple of paragraphs for a few minutes, reading and re-reading them. they looked really good. they were written well. and they were totally beside the point, so i chucked 'em.

the only point was who i think i am. who cares where it came from? all that matters is that i packed its bags and sent it on an extended vacation to hawai'i. a voice that grating, nagging, unhappy and unable to be satisfied definitely needs a trip to hawai'i even more than i do.

have fun, little nagging voice. come back when you're rested, tanned, and eager to show off souveniers.

i'll be over here, conquering a chapter in the Heartbreaking Work that had kept me in writer's block for fifteen months!

you read that right: i conquered my over-a-year-long writer's block.

i just did it. just like i said, i just sat down and wrote, and i didn't care about whether it was good, or legible, or publishable, or marketable. i didn't care. i just wrote. all that mattered was the creation. let the fingers fly over the keyboard and who gives a damn what comes out.

incredibly, what happened was that i fleshed out a character that was entirely theoretical up until now, discovered new motives to my antagonist that i had no idea were there...things that made this hatred of my heroine intensely personal. i saw the first interaction and definition of the dynamic between heroine and antagonist.

it was beautiful.

i am so damn proud of myself! i took myself out for mongolian to celebrate, sang "comfortably numb" by pink floyd and "all these things that i've done" by the killers at the top of my lungs in my car on the freeway. i wore my hair down in public (it's so long i always tie it back), enjoyed the gorgeous weather with the windows down and the sunroof back...and just reveled in the feeling of accomplishment.

you'll see my name on the bookshelves only too soon. "what [wo]man can conceive and believe, [s]he can achieve." --napoleon hill

damn straight.