New Story... Yay!

Ahhh... I've been saying for the last few months that I had to get back to writing. Not revising, not editing, but writing. As in creating something entirely new. Well, first I had the go round with my husband in the hospital, then I had to pack up the townhouse and move, then I had to unpack all of those freakin' boxes and get everything put away. Then I got walloped with edits for two books. That left precious little time, and even less energy to be honest, to even think about starting a new book.

However, I need a break from After the Storm. Hugh is ticking me off because I can't quite figure out how to keep him from seeming like a total weenie at the end of the book. I need to let it simmer until a good ending finally comes to mind. Right now, I just want to slap him because he's this total powerful Alpha male - up to the last chapter, when it all just goes right out the window. Now, I know Miranda has tamed him, but it's just a bit too much, y'know?

So one night this week, I'm poking through my Word files, just to see what I've got there. Every so often, I go in and look at the stories hanging out there. Some are completed and awaiting rewrites. Someday, I swear I'll get to them. There are a couple I think have real potential. It's just that they are contemporary romances - bording on erotic, actually. I write fairly steamy love scenes to begin with, but these are HOT - and I'm just not in a contemporary place. I'm stuck in the past, so I clicked through that folder, just to see. And I happened upon the first fifty pages of something that I think I can work with. I'm up to almost 30,000 words on it now and I'm liking it. It's only a first draft, and it's pretty rough, but it'll get smoother as I plow on.

It's a relief, because whenever I finish up a project, I have that moment (or many moments) of wondering if I've run out of ideas. There's always that panic of "What if that was the last book I'll be able to write? What if I've gone stale. Or just don't have another book in me?" I always think of To Kill a Mockingbird and how it was the only book Harper Lee ever wrote. Of course, if I'd written that, and it was my only book, that's not doing too badly, now that I think about it.

But that fear's always there until I begin something new. Then there's the first few pages, where my thoughts are more this is awful. You're done. You got nothin'. It's enough to make me wonder why I should care if I ever write another book, to be honest.

Then it passes. And, like now, I'm sitting on something that might turn out just fine. We'll see. Right now, it's just a matter of getting the story's skeleton on paper (well, actually on screen). When I type the end, it's really just the beginning because I will fill in the details and fill out the book in subsequent drafts.

For now, I'll just be glad I've got at least one more book in me. =)