The Writing on the Wall

I will start out by saying that this piece has been sitting in my drafts for months now. When I first started writing, I had the intention of writing about my thriller/suspense novel and submitting it to the New Year, New Projects challenge.

Then I changed my mind.

Why?

Because I started to feel the burnout of submitting to too many challenges at the very last minute. Trying to bang out a worthy submission in the final hours, hoping it would get some recognition, then being disappointed in myself that I rushed and didn't do the best I could. That disappointment then validated by the lack of reads and no wins. Most challenge prompts spark ideas almost instantaneously, but I don't always have the time, or the energy, to write them with the perfection I strive too hard to hit.

I wish I could jump back to the early 2000s when I would close myself in my bedroom, shuffle through the CDs in my 5-disc changer stereo system and sit against the headboard of my bed with a marble composition notebook and a pen. No pressure, no timelines, no expectations. Just music, my thoughts, and the freedom to write whatever came to mind.

Thinking back, I can't recall the initial inspiration for the story I started in that purple marble composition notebook so many years ago. It might have been a book I had read, or a TV show I had seen. Nonetheless, I was inspired to create my own characters and a storyline involving a high school girl and how she meets her crush when she takes a job babysitting his cousins. The story began as a stereotypically high school drama including mean girls, the awkwardness of teenaged years, and the excitement of first loves.

But gradually, that innocent story morphed into something more sinister. Why, I'm still not sure. Maybe I watched too many episodes of Law & Order SVU, CSI, and true crime documentaries as a teenager. Maybe my interest in forensic science got the better part of my mind stuck on a path into the darkness that exists in the world.

Either way, the bright and happy story I started with eventually transformed into a darker and more suspenseful story. I stuck with the same two main characters, but they aged as I aged, they matured as I matured. I've infused my novel with the things that have piqued my interest as I've moved through life as an under grad, a grad student, and then a full-time scientist: criminal justice, psychology, mental health/illness, the intricacies of relationships, pharmacology and toxicology.

My writing ebbs and flows through life. Sometimes ideas brim to the surface. Sometimes I feel like I'm in the barren wasteland of burnt out creativity. I have ideas pinned on the wall, left like forgotten laundry on the clothesline, long dried out and devoid of any substance. Characters sit in waiting rooms, reminiscent of Beetlejuice's "Neitherworld waiting room," seemingly suspended in limbo, or left as scattered, mangled, jumbled monstrosities in the shadows, dismembered and reassembled, like Sid's toys in Toy Story.

Over the years, I've recognized that my writing goes through seasons like the weather, cycles like the tides, phases like the moon.

It fights through tumultuous storms, high pressure systems, and never-ending droughts.

It pushes and pulls me through the day. Washing gently over the sand or crushing violently against the rocks.

It waxes and wanes. Sometimes it shines brightly, other times it disappears into the darkness.

Right now, it feels like I am crawling through the parched desert during a drought.

Right now, it feels like I am clawing the jagged cliffs as angry waves try to pull me under.

Right now, it feels like I am shut in the darkness, a new moon hidden in the shadows, an object barely seen as the moon's ashen glow.

But whatever season or cycle or phase my writing is in, I know I will make it through. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but I will.

I will break on through to the other side.

Sometimes I just need to take a step back and remind myself of the reason why I started writing.

It wasn't for attention.

It wasn't for money.

It wasn't for anyone else.

It was for me.

Plain and simple.