July 19, 2011
So, I have broken out the proverbial pen and started writing on my novel again. It’s hard to come back to something I was once so passionate about and try to pick up where I left off. My feelings about the situations in the various scenes seemed to have changed. Or maybe it’s me. Maybe I have changed and my need to tell that story doesn’t exist anymore.
For the last year I have been searching for something to do with my life that would be a total change from teaching. I thought about becoming a nurse and even registered for chemistry and anatomy classes. I will be finishing those classes in August. And what I got out of my time back in college was 1) I am a teacher, not a nurse, and don’t want to change the major that is my life, and 2) though I am good at science, (I am carrying As in both classes), I don’t want to work that hard for something I am not totally passionate about. So, this change in life focus may have played a part in my change in feelings about my fictional characters and their fictional lives.
To remedy that I have registered for the Writer’s Conference at UNF again this year. I enjoyed it so much last year, and I had hoped that my novel would have been finished by now and I’d have something to be critiqued; but it’s not and I don’t. However, I am looking forward to the classes, especially the e-Seminar on publishing your book in e-formats. That seems to be the one sure way my book may get published.
Just as my trip to Colorado reaffirmed that I am a teacher, not a nurse, I am hopeful that this writer’s conference will instill in me again that love of telling a great story. I need to get back to that place of creativity and imagination, totally absorbed in my fictional world with my imaginary friends. It’s a pleasant place where I can be somebody else (many somebody elses) for a while and have adventures I wouldn’t normally dream of having. I look forward to the time when classes are over and I can focus again on that time when I can write, and be who I was meant to be-a storyteller with a story to tell.