I’m writing a novel. I’ve been working on the outline and premise for well over a year, but work and life and relocating to the other side of the continent have all been barriers to my efforts of actually writing. Work is steady, life is what it is, but the relocation is done, and the muse that used to drive me to write twenty thousand words in a weekend (in my fanfiction-writing heyday) is back from her vacation in the South Pacific and is, once again, encouraging me to write actual fictional words about actual fictional characters. Finally. 

I sat down last night with my little Asus Transformer T100, which is what I do all my writing on, pulled up my Word doc, and fell in love with my characters all over again. This is a complicated story – Gracie and Jasper, aka Jaz, live in modern-day Seattle. Lydia lives both in modern-day Seattle as a grandmother, and as her much younger self through letters written in 1943-44. Jimmy lives solely through those World War II era letters. I have two distinct stories to tell, and the one that develops through the letters influences the modern one. Past meets present. Present learns from past. Reconciliation occurs in one time period that could never happen in another. I know what the endgame is for both of them – the dance is getting all four characters there.

I forgot how much I love writing. I mean, I know I love writing because it’s the thing that makes my heart beat and yearn more than any other. Telling stories is my passion, but the actual act of sitting down and putting words on the screen thrills me.  I’ve missed it so much.  It’s a lot like coming home after being away for a while.  I’m never as comfortable in my own skin as when I’m constructing a story. I love stories that make me cry, and this one is planned to do just that.  I hope my muse sticks around for a while because I want 2015 to be the year I get this story told once and for all!