Getting Started

After a little more than two weeks of working on plots, research, book proposals, and short stories, yesterday afternoon I finally got back to writing a novel. As I've mentioned here before, I almost always enjoy the first day on a new book. I get a burst of enthusiasm and tear into it. Well, not this time. I spent the whole afternoon fumbling and flailing around and trying to work up some momentum that just wouldn't come. I was afraid that when I looked back over the pages today, they'd be terrible and might even have to be thrown out.

Thankfully, that proved not to be the case. They weren't great pages, but they weren't nearly as bad as they seemed yesterday. I did some revisions, tightening them up and making them flow more smoothly, and they turned out okay, or at least good enough to let me go on. The writing still went slowly for part of the day today, but then this afternoon I finally got in a rhythm and did some pretty good work. Of course, I don't know if that rhythm will still be there when I sit down at the computer in the morning. I certainly hope so.