Writing. . . Maybe? We'll see what this turns out to be.

So as you probably guessed from the title, I have pretty much no idea what I'm actually going to write about.  I kind of forgot to plan a blog today because it kind of slipped my mind that today was Tuesday until just now.  So this could be interesting.

I've really been wanting to write lately.  Like REALLY bad, more than I've wanted to in a long time.  But every time I've sat down to write, I have been unable to do so.  I pulled up Chapter 11 of CATCH ME the other day to try to finish it (I've been working on it since about April, probably.  Maybe early May), but I couldn't write a single word.  And the sadder thing? (that doesn't sound right, but oh well.) The last time that draft had been altered was July 24th or something ridiculous like that. 

Writing is an escape for me, a lot of the time.  But right now?  It feels more like a prison.  I feel utterly confined to my story, and I shouldn't feel that way.  As I've stated before, I feel that if I do not finish this first draft before moving on to something else, I will be betraying Jimmy.  What I wouldn't give to just talk this out with him; pick his brain on the subject.

I remember how it felt to finish the first draft of Solace (at the time titled No Title).  It was such a feeling of accomplishment, even though I knew it was terrible crap that I would never let see the light of day again - well, at least, no one else's eyes but my own.  I thought for sure I'd be able to get this first draft of CM done within a few months.  It was such a personal story, one that I felt needed to be told both for Jimmy and for myself.  It was a sort of closure for me that I didn't get from my cousin.  But somehow life got complicated and now I find myself. . . uninspired.

I think I might need to just start it over, in order to write it better.  I think I didn't distance myself enough from it and made it too personal, too much of what I experienced, that it isn't a story anymore.  I need to distance myself, in a way, from Jimmy's character in the story.  But I'm confusing myself now.

So I think this is what I'm going to do:

November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo).  I think in November, I will start a new project, completely different from Catch Me, and see if I can finish it within the month.  If I can't, oh well.  If I can, great.  But the point is, I need to be writing.  I need to find my words, for they have failed me for far too long.  And, as Leanna Renee Hieber said, "The only writer who's not a writer is the one that's not writing."