Well, my talk didn’t go as planned.

But, in reflection, I wonder if that was on purpose… at least subconsciously.

I got to the part where I was going to start talking about writing becoming difficult because I’d given into myths and how I came back from that. Unfortunately, I looked down at my notes and I couldn’t even read them. Yes, I was nervous, but was there something more playing at hand?

It made me miss out on a lot of what I wanted to say.

No, I don’t write character sketches. A character enters with his/her voice and motivation. There is a point for the character to be there. No, I don’t write to market; I write what I want to write. No, I don’t intentionally plant symbolism in my writing. I’ll let my readers determine the meaning behind my works. I just want to entertain and tell a good story. I enjoy sitting in a room, alone, and making stuff up.

There was so much. It spun around in my head all afternoon. I did flip open one of my books and started reading a little bit. Yes, I did surprise myself. After I tell the story, I might hold it in my head, but I don’t remember the words. And it is those words that suck in readers.

Once I could finally shake that not-good-enough feeling, I managed to get back to the tasks at hand. Unfortunately, that didn’t pick me up either. There are some things that make me feel even worse. And that just kicked in my not-good-enough thoughts hard time. But not about writing this time, strangely enough. It was everything else.

That was when my creative voice peeked out from hiding and asked if it was okay to come out.

I realized that my creative voice didn’t want to talk about it’s recovery from prolific writer, to one suffering (dying) from the myths I was submitting to, back to being a prolific writer. Creative voice only wanted to remember the good and not reflect on the struggle. I remembered that I loved learning how other writers work, that I have picked and adopted various habits from them. And, it really wanted to create.

And keep creating.

For some reason, that feels like a breath of fresh air.

Cheers.