Well, that went well. Not.

If you peek in at my last post, all the way back in November of last year, I was still doing my best to plug away at NaNoWriMo. There was also mention of a strange “bug bite” and infection. It turned out that the bite wasn’t a bite and the infection wasn’t an infection. An old auto-immune disorder had resurfaced and took me down hard not long after I last blogged. Still, I kept fighting my way through the daily writing, made it to about 30,000 words, and just … lost it.

This thing with my immune system really gets to me. People will say I’m such a strong person, but they really don’t know the way this cripples me inside. I shut down, went to bed, lost most of my income, and set aside the book.

I’m back here now, because I am doing better, and my intentions are to open up that blasted file again in Scrivener, read through everything I’d written back in November, and finally finish that draft.  I’m just under half-way done with the story itself, with a great big sign hanging over the file that says, “Some Assembly Required”.

Normally, I write linearly. I embrace the words of a very wise man:

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

In the case of this book, though (maybe it was the fever and illness), ideas were coming in disjointedly. I would receive (it seemed, from nowhere) a chunk here and a bit there. What I have in Scrivener consists of a mess of disconnected segments from beginning, middle and end. I know how the story ends, it’s all drafted out, but am only loosely aware of how I’m going to get from here to there.

I have been writing in the interim. The output has been mostly non-fiction; I’ve been writing informational articles centered around my other self, my other life. I just haven’t been writing what I really want to write. What I want is what I love: paranormal mystery.

I’m back. Or, at the very least I am bound and determined to return. I didn’t win at NaNo ’14, but I haven’t lost, either. There is a darned good story in there, somewhere. It’s time to open the gates again, and let the words run free.