Returning to writing

Hi there! I thought I'd talk about something very near to me, returning to writing after a long break.

As I've said before, I wrote my first story in 2009, yet I didn't even start writing The Shoreline of Memory until late 2017... and between those two I only finished two books, and those were significantly before high school. There was a long time when I couldn't finish any stories that I started, so I just gave up for a while.

Why did I go back? I had a dream, (yeah, corny I know, but it's true.) I dreamt that I was a widow with two young children, who used to be a spy. My dream flashed back to a mission from my past, which took place aboard a fashionable, steampunk submarine-though the mission, in that case, had been to recover some stolen jewels. I won't share any spoilers here, but the dramatic climax was also the same, though in that case, I swam away in some steampunk-style scuba gear. 

I'm a lucid dreamer, (I know when I'm dreaming) and I have an unusually high level of recollection when it comes to my dreams, and a lot of them would make interesting books, but I couldn't get this one out of my head, so, a while later, I started writing down the story of Grace, because I knew this was the only way I'd ever get it back out of my head. 

Was it easy to start writing again? No, it was incredibly difficult. Some days the words flowed out of me, but others it was like getting water out of a rock. I ended up dragging my feet for months, writing only a few times over the course of 2-3 months in the midst of a horrible writers' block. And by the time I managed to finish my first draft, my writing style had changed. 

Originally, I tried to write like I had when I was a kid, but when that failed, and I finally stopped trying to make it work, I started to write like me. 

Returning to writing after a long time is daunting, and it isn't easy. But, if you are a writer, then it'll be the best thing you ever slog through. PLEASE give yourself time to relearn who you are as a writer and give yourself permission to suck while you do this. Yeah, your writing will probably look awful when you look back over it, there are going to be pockets of madness and changes throughout, but if you've ever started anything after a hiatus, you know that there is a re-learning curve, writing is no different.

If I never had that dream or didn't do the work of re-learning how to write, there would be one less book in the world, think of that.

Have a great day, and keep writing!