In Which You Meet My Sainted Aunt Fanny ;)

There comes a point in every writer's life when she stops and thinks,

"Oh my sainted aunt Fanny, what in tarnation have I gotten myself into?!?"

(or at least, that's how my brain would think it :)

And the only proper answer is, "you've gotten yourself into an adventure!"

A gift bestowed upon most writers that many other people miss out on is that of being able to see life in 3D. We don't just sit back and take each moment with unruffled complacency as it comes.

We watch people, seeing the complexity of characters and wondering if we could ever create such a person in our book.

We harrow up our souls trying to understand the grand plot behind every situation, and we get great satisfaction from it, though we seldom succeed.

We don't just live life, but we recreate it in our stories.

Much as it sounds affected, I know that you, every single other writer, and I store bits and pieces of our experiences in our minds to brush off and dazzle the world with someday.

Writing is an adventure. I know we've all heard this till we're blue in the face and wish someone would have one original idea to tote around instead, but the life of an author has it's ups and downs.

We fall into the depths of despair now and again when our characters or plot won't behave. But how sweet is the thrill that accompanies satisfaction in the work of our hands. I can think of only a few things more precious than to click "save" in Microsoft Word, sit back, and scroll through the pages, realizing you've just made history, even if only in your own life.
A writers, our imaginations are occupied in a land of our fabrication, among people we placed there, and events our wild fancy concocted. There is no limit to what can happen in the pages of a novel. I realize that I quote this self-same line from Miss Potter far to often, but it's become a byword for me. :)

"There is something delicious about writing those first few words of a story. You never can tell quite where they'll take you. Mine took me here, where I belong."

*nostalgic sigh*

So you see, as in our lives when we follow God, so in our writing if we keep a weather-eye out for adventures and then follow the words of our story you'll see...
They often almost write themselves.
Have you ever had that sensation of the words dancing out of your pen? As if you are hardly writing them, but they are arranging themselves on the page in a fashion quite wild, but perfect? :) Those moments are pretty much amazing.
I guess the main point of this post was to make other writers cheer up if they were sighing over their sainted Aunt Fanny and wondering what in tarnation they were doing...as crazy as it sounds, as inexplicable as it is to other writers,

We are simple following the path of our pens, aiding our imaginations with a bit of good sense, humor, and tenderness.

Believe me, I am not trying to make writing out to be a mystical, creepy, ridiculous thing. I am merely trying to get the point across, that one can definitely over-think their writing. The best pieces I've ever written are the ones where I exiled my brain and let my heart do the composing.
The pieces where I didn't give a lollipop for what a publisher might think or what was trendy in the market, or what people would read, but where I wrote what was in me to write.
Try to disentangle yourself from those sorts of cares. Who really gives a hoot for what the big-wigs think?
We are people, and as such, there are other people like us. I promise that somewhere, somehow, you will find a person who will love your book and identify with it.
And isn't that what we writers are all about? Sharing our love of life in words so that other people may learn to see the beauty? ~Rachel