Anyway, the long silence here was appropriate.

I’m still not writing.

But.

I’m in that wonderful phase right before I write. Sometimes it’s months, or weeks…. but it’s always the same. This particular time is when I start to hear the dialogue of people I’ve never met.

In the back of my mind, while driving. Or when I’m drifting off to sleep. Snippets of fictitious conversations between characters that are slowly, gradually forming somewhere in my mind…

This part of the creative process used to freak me right on out. As a sixteen year old, I was alarmed and thought it must mean I was crazy.

As a thirty five year old, I suppose it might mean that I’m crazy.

But I just don’t care.

I’m too smitten with the ideas of who these characters are, and where they come from, and what they have to say… and ultimately what their stories will be. There just isn’t any time or reason to be alarmed by their voices. I’m too busy hanging on  their every word.

Generally, these sweet people will become clearer and more defined, more outspoken. This is good.

I don’t have time for them until May, so I hope they’re patient. I really don’t know them well enough to know yet.

I love this part. I haven’t written a word, and so I haven’t messed anyone up. I haven’t written myself into a corner that I don’t know how to get out of. No one has been written as harsher than I intended, or more naive, or more or less anything. Nothing too truthful or personal about me is sitting on a page, waiting to be read by someone who can easily see it isn’t so fictitious after all. None of that exists yet.

There isn’t a sense of accomplishment, since there aren’t any words. And writers need word counts.

But the intangible, magical, creative, fun part deserves its own acknowledgment.  The time when characters are quietly born and they whisper their problems and concerns and reveal who they really are if I’ll only listen.

I’m listening.

I’m writing on a long forgotten site no one ever sees just as a way of saying, “I hear you. I like you, but I’m kinda busy. Wait for me?”

And this year…. it’s almost over.  6 more days.

Goal: 50,000 words.

I’m just under 43,000.

It’s going to happen.

I’ve put off even writing this post until now for a reason.  I’ve been too busy confronting all the doubts that go with a big undertaking. Why is it that until a certain point in every book – at LEAST 150 pages in, I still very much doubt I’ll ever finish writing it?  Doubt doesn’t just creep in and whisper, “you’ll never finish, Kelsey.  It stinks. Every word. Or at least, every third word… really….  stinks….” My brand of Doubt yells. And it keeps yelling. Until the pages stack up so high that it’s impossible for me to take it seriously any longer.

I wonder if that point in time – the point at which Doubt shuts up – is negotiable. If I thought it would change once I’d written a book or two – or published a book or two… well. No. It didn’t.  It’s as loud and persistent as ever, and every bit as convincing.

At least this month – November – crazy month for all nanowrimoers – the pages stack up extra fast and that point of Doubt stopping all its yelling… comes that much faster.

Soooo, how would you tell someone how to walk in heels? 

 Oooh, it’s sweet thing to see!

Now.  I just need to do it again today.

And tomorrow.