The Joy of Writing

I've been down in the dumps lately for a variety of reasons, none of them interesting enough to share, except for the fact that I'm feeling very unproductive. It's always helped me to have a goal, rather than watching the hours tick by like a lazy sloth. And since I stopped writing a while back, I have no goal. And no impetus to find one.

The only reason I keep working (sort of) on my memorygram project is because I feel obligated. Forty-five questions doesn't sound like a lot, but when the expectation is to write a "story" for each of them, even the uninteresting ones, it's a bit daunting. So, yesterday I had some free time, and I set a goal (yay---a goal!) to respond to three questions. 

One of the questions concerned my favorite family tradition. I knew the answer, but writing it all out seemed like more work than I wanted to take on. Then I remembered that I'd written at least one blog post about that exact subject. It was a long time ago and my memory was fuzzy, but I went to Blogger and did a keyword search. Sure enough, I found a couple of posts. (I've been blogging since 2006, so I'm not surprised I visited the same topics more than once.) One of the posts was pretty shoddily written, but the other...It was great. I'd written it on July 4, 2018, and coincidentally, it was about the 4th of July. 😀 I was probably feeling nostalgic, missing my family. Weirdly, I wrote it in present tense, describing the day and the events as they happened. I don't think present tense generally works in a book, but as to what was essentially a short story, it worked perfectly.

Have you ever written something, found it years later, and marveled that it came from you? "I don't write like this. Is this actually my writing?" Maybe way back in 2018 I wasn't as bad a writer as I thought I was.

I only had to make a few tweaks to it in order to make it fit the question, and I was proud and amazed. 

That's when it hit me---I miss the joy of writing. 

When it's good, there's no feeling quite like it. 

I went to bed last night pumped. Now I want to write again. Not something new; I'm still not on board with that, but I can fix that old novel I've needed to rework and republish. It's been gnawing at me for a few months, even though at most, only the first chapter or two needs to be redone. Frankly, I doubted I could do it. I lost my mojo. Or at the very least, misplaced it.

I know that my writing isn't always magical. Hardly ever, really. And even once one experiences that magic, recreating it is a bitch. But I can write. I want to write. I detest everything that goes along with marketing a book, but I love writing one.

Thus, it's time to stop feeling sorry for myself, and just get on with it.