Mar 29, 20203 min read

Sunday Evening Post, Iss. 5

Updated: Sep 8, 2022

This was a weird week for me; not in the sense that things were difficult or easy, just… unusual. My week started Sunday with a WW staff meeting where we had a major announcement: we’re finally recognized as a federal nonprofit, which means we can apply for grant funding, US donors can get a tax break, and we can work toward bigger things for Writer’s Workout in general. We get to provide workshops and more amazing writing adventures! We even launched merchandise; I think I’m still in shock. We finished the internship interviews with several great candidates that give us the opportunity to open Writer’s Games registration to far more participants than we originally expected. Anytime we can accept more participants for Writer’s Games, I’m thrilled. I LOVE Games season. Then Wednesday happened. Knowing you want to work on a piece and having the mental acuity and patience to do so are two very different things. On Wednesday, I happened to be gifted with both. I am routinely jealous of people who can, after a long day at work, just pick up and write. It stings because I used to be that person. I used to be able to write page after page of fiction during a lecture, while imprisoned in a waiting room, idling in a crowded place, etc. I used to be able to look at a page and words would magically appear. I’m not that writer anymore except on Wednesday, somehow, I was. I still don’t know what’s happening in this detective story but I figured some things out and I can see where parts of this novel are heading. I love the way it’s unfolding because I’m watching it happen. Where normally, I’m an intensive planner with an outline and research and lists and traits and everything’s so organized… this isn’t. But I’m not exactly pantsing this novel either. It’s a strange sensation, this writing experience. I feel like I can predict the future, but only the next five minutes. I feel like my creative brain is one step ahead of my analytical brain and the rest of me can’t write fast enough to keep up. I missed this. This is how writing used to be for me and thinking back, I can pinpoint the exact story that took me out of this blissful creative bubble. Now that words are coming out with such vigor that I wrote two pens dry this week alone, I have the itch to pick up that original story again and… fix it. Amy introduced me to a wonderful workshop this week. Technically, the original was the 20th but the host ran a live repeat on the 25th. I’ve had a soft spot for ghost stories and the gothic style way too long not to try it. The idea journal I keep has six pages of ghost or gothic ideas that sit rotting in my fear of the adventure. I watch enough ghost hunting shows, what was I waiting for? So I went to the workshop and to no one’s surprise, Amy was right. It was amazing. The energy in that live, virtual workshop had me excited to create. I wrote things I never considered before, subjects I’ve never attempted. I found a new character and a continent I’ve never fictionally explored. I created and now...