Drawing The Quill Once More

Before Christmas, my friends Derek and Chris and I had started a writing project. We had wanted to work on writing a 10,000 - 20,0000 word story. The idea was to attempt to work our way through a complete story of some size. There was never any formal goal of publishing these anywhere and feedback would be given as we moved through the development.

We had each written a few chapters by the time things got busy for us all around Christmas and as usual, the project kind of slowed to a stall. Up to that point, we had managed to read each other's work, make some comments, and I think we had the roots of three interesting stories.

The stalling reminds me of the impact natural pressures can place upon the creative process and of how a full time job as a writer must demand a certain determined single-mindedness at times.

Before we started the contest, for a couple of months, I'd been writing hundreds or thousands of words a week, in the form of various stories, outlines, scenes, character sketches, ideas, etc.

I haven't returned to my project story yet, which probably sits at a few thousand unedited words now, but will probably end up in the 15,000+ word stage. But to get back on the horse, tonight I started doing character sketches and scenario sketches. Only about 385 words tonight, but I'm back at it.

My work will probably be sporadic, since the new job and situations at home are consuming of time and energy, but I reaffirm my goal to complete the original project.

Beyond that, I plan to work towards a compilation of short stories I can publish (even if I only produce a few copies for some friends) using the facilities of http://lulu.com.

They say everyone has a book in them. I'm planning to put that theory to the test.