It’s 2022, and guess what? I’M BACK BABY!
After I turned in my last manuscript of the year in early November (and struggling mightily to get creative momentum for NaNo or, well, literally anything else) I decided it was in my best interest to take a bit of a hiatus to recharge my batteries. The freelancing gig, as much as I love it, had really worn me out and with the holidays, other non-writing obligations to oversee, and the day job being slammed, I didn’t really have the bandwidth for any other sort of demands on my time.
Yet, while I enjoyed the break, I also really missed the hustle. I missed the creative surges, the rush to meet deadline, the dopamine hit of seeing my word count tracker creep toward the end goal. But most of all, I missed the feeling (the fact) that I was being productive with my time.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been chastising myself for not using this break from freelance work to more seriously tackle personal writing projects. My excuse, every single time, was “Well, none of my ideas inspire me right now.” And that’s true. Perhaps it was creative burn out, but at no point did I reflect upon the at least six novel ideas I have percolating and think that I needed to write any of them right now. So I didn’t. And now hiatus is over and I didn’t accomplish a single damn thing.
That got me thinking, and as I was mulling over my writing goals for the new year, and once again lamenting that none of my ideas are really jumping out at me at the moment, I realized that waiting for fickle inspiration to strike to write is some straight bullshit.
If there is one thing I have learned about writing, is that there is no such thing as the “perfect time” to write a story. There is no such thing as inspiration that lasts all 120,000 words of a novel. There will never be a moment that is ideal beyond description to start writing, and even if there is it only lasts just that long: a moment.
So, I want that energy to be what I take into 2022. No more waiting, no more passively sitting by and hoping my muse shows her face, no more blaming her absence for my lack of work ethic. Let this year be the year I chase my dreams down with a lasso and laser like precision.
It’s happening. And even I won’t stop me this time.
Kerry Share
Just Another Struggling Writer 
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