Getting Back in the Groove

College.

It wears you down with loads of homework; essays, speeches, chapters and books that need to be read before class.

Well, I've finished my first semester.

And I passed every one of my classes.

Hurrah!

Now, I have to get back into the groove of living at home.

Even more important, the groove of fiction writing.

Wait, I write in my head all the time, or at least think of writing all the time, so it should be easy.

That.

Is.

Sadly.

Horribly.

Wrong.

I have been home for almost a week, and only tonight have I been able to sit down and put hands to keyboard and get something out.

Oh, I've outlined four chapters (er, more like three and a quarter) in two days.

That much is thankfully true.

Even so, I haven't been able to DO any writing.

I've tried using paper and pencil, my old fall back method, but I just ended up doodling.

Then it hit me.

I've been burying myself in 'writing know-how' for I don't know how long.

College has been beating grammar rules into me, and my free time is constantly filled with reading other writers' blogs and searching for tips on how to make my writing better.

I'd scour Pinterest for pins that had inspirational quotes or pictures full of Plot Bunniez.

All of this was done with good intentions (that will probably help in the long run).

But I wasn't doing anything with them.

They were just information that I was storing in my head and letting sit there.

Today, I didn't do a lick of thinking about writing or any of my stories.

I just drank coffee, knitted and crocheted with a good friend, and worried about Christmas.

I went shopping at a yarn store and drooled over yarn and knitting needles.

I started a new knitting project and finished some old ones.

We complained about what was added to the latest Hobbit movie that wasn't in the book (one in particular was especially odious to us).

I laughed, I knitted, and I completely zoned out from my future worries as much as I could.

I came home, helped cook dinner, and curled up with one of my favorite fantasy novels and just read for pleasures sake.

Just about half an hour ago I wrote 400 words in fifteen minutes.

That is the most that I've written in a very long time, especially for fiction.

Oh, it's not my best writing of course.

It is after all unedited as of now, but I feel so exhilarated that I finally wrote something again.

I sat back after that fifteen minutes, stared at the screen, and thought why?

Why, after all this time of fighting with myself each time I tried to write, I can suddenly do it now?

Well, this is the clearest that I can put my answer.

Because I wasn't really writing.

Oh, I was planning ahead before.

I was plotting, I was learning how to edit, and I was figuring out how to get my work out there.

But I wasn't REALLY putting it into action.

My mind was storing it away, and I'm sure that some of it will come out as I continue my work and show itself to be highly useful.

But tonight, I sat down, looked at my first draft, and started to completely rewrite my first chapter.

I didn't think about grammar other than pressing enter for a new paragraph and putting the proper punctuation in.

I didn't think about how the characters are supposed to look like or act.

I just wrote.

I don't know how I did it; only God could have helped me, as I had decided to give up on my writing for the rest of this week.

I now feel so completely at ease with my writing.

I know now what to do:

Give the final result to God and just write.

Keep on Writing

God Bless

SDG

Joy