Lately, I have wanted to write.
This is not an inconsequential thing. Writing has been a "someday" proposition for quite a while. There have been all sorts of have-tos before I could ever get back to writing my novel. I "have to" figure out what I am writing. I "have to" get a new computer/get the old computer running/head to the computer center and buy some time on a computer that works. (How did anyone ever write anything longer than a page in the days before home computers?) I "have to" re-read and edit what I already have. I "have to" stop complaining and just write.
But all of that "having to" just made me tired.
Now, I WANT to write.
Maybe it's because I finally did get my new computer. (Yeay!) Maybe it's because I have been waiting table/bartending for long enough that the novelty has worn off, and I am back to remembering that I really need to do something important and productive with my life. (Wait, that's another "have to".) Maybe it's because I am in a new relationship with a new man, and Spring is finally here, and life has turned over and started to wake up. (Gr-roan, grumble, what time IS it?)
I have been transcribing what I have already written into my new computer. The beast (the computer, that is,) I borrowed from a friend is an ancient and tricksey thing. So I have to re-type everything. You would think that this was a pain in the ass, but actually, it's been really valuable.
All that old work, so much of it stream of consciousness, is now being molded with the vision I have been developing in the long months of being technologically challenged. I was "forced" not to write, but that made me think deep, and long about my book, and sent it back into the soup that is my brain. What has floated to the top of that soup is some sense.
I don't know what sense it is entirely, but it's starting to mesh. The random half-formed pieces are being placed next to each other, and I am am surprised to find them fitting together to make something whole.
I feel that having patience with my novel is paying off.
Lies! I didn't have patience. I wanted my novel, I wanted it written, and I wanted it done NOW, no YESTERDAY. I would force the words out of my head, because I had to write PAGES. I had to have writing practice. I had to BE a writer, or what use was it to quit teaching?
But that's why having my computer crash back in September, and losing half my novel, and having to struggle with so many tech blocks to writing might actually have been the best thing for my story. Because if I didn't have all the glitches, I might just have kept writing forward because I was impatient to have something written. Some sort of product that might someday get published and make me a REAL writer. Forcing it to come before it was time, a premature birth of my work, possibly never able to breathe on its own.
But now, let me repeat. I actually WANT to write.
Now, I feel the movement of the story under the surface, or not quite under the surface. And I think it might be able to survive being born.
