Keeping the Faith IWSG - March 2015

 This is my March contribution to Alex Cavanaugh's IWSG.  To read more posts click here:

Joyce Carol Oates wrote a book called Faith of a Writer.  I’ll be honest. The book itself didn’t resonate with me, but the title still does.  Especially now.

At the end of 2014, I found myself in a writing slump.  I’d started querying Under the Apple Tree in December, and about that time I had this, Oh-God-that-took-two-years-of-my-writing-life-and-what-if-there-is-no-interest-feeling that dragged me way down.  Intellectually, I knew I needed to get cracking on something else, but the thought of putting more years writing a story that might go nowhere overwhelmed me.  I had fleeting, frightening thoughts.  What if I can’t do it again?

Here's where faith stepped up to the plate. As lousy as I felt, I made myself sit down at the computer five days a week and write . . . something, anything, a brief blog post, a letter to myself, a freelance article, a poem, with the idea that if I kept at it I'd break out of my funk. Anything to climb my way to writing Nirvana again. And as I pushed and prodded myself, a germ of an idea based on a writing prompt I’d had fun with a few years ago niggled its way up. 

But still, getting the words out felt like trying to make cold honey pour. I spent hours in the library writing character worksheets in order to find a way to move forward, which ended up taking me backward when I realized the pull-your-teeth writing I had done was a  false-start.  All that time spent developing one character, only to discover a big part of this new story belonged to another. That meant cut, cut, cutting, and starting again, which hurt, but still meant progress.  And  then, as things finally began falling in place I had another hiccup. This time, a legal assumption I made in regard to the plot. Upon investigation, it isn't credible.  

But now, I know the fix, which of course means more cutting, and I know this.  It was faith that got me this far. Faith in myself.  Faith in my writing. The belief that if I just keep going, I'll find the joy again.

I'm pretty sure I'm almost there.