Musings on a Windy Day

I am afraid of myself.  When I set my books free, I exposed my soul.  I am naked for the world to judge.  I am tough, but I am not sure how tough.  I have not had any critics yet, but there is always someone eager to dissect, analyze, and berate everything ever written.  I must not crumble if my thoughts are ripped apart.  I must see any harsh words as suggestions for improvement and not.  My writing may be fiction, but it is undeniably me -- my thoughts, my imaginary friends and adversaries brought to life, my demons splattered upon a pristine page.  A writer must wear plate armor so her inner demons do not injure her as they rush into the world with claws aloft.

No matter what, I will always be able to call myself a writer.  I am not aspiring, I have written.  I set forth on an uncertain journey, and although I am far from its conclusion, I have completed the quests I laid on my own head.  At some point I had to stop editing and say to myself, "That was the last word I am changing.  This task is complete."  I am now working toward completion for the fifth time.  Then I must move on to the sixth, which is a 2/3 complete first draft with some brutal demons of its own to overcome.  Then what next?  A fork in the road.  I can see it.  With Absolution I finally reach the end of the Malora quest line and must choose to go left or right into the next world of my creation.

I revisit my old inspirations as I rewrite The Crystal Lattice.  Some creatures were inspired by food that rotted in my refrigerator during a multi-day power outage during the summer of 2003, the summer I started writing my first book.  There are characters inspired by people who I loathed so much that just hearing their names made me angry.  And in the middle of everything is a narrator inspired by a narcoleptic daydream I had while hiking in the Ozarks alone.  These are snapshots of my life as a twenty-one year old.  I matured with my character and found he was a different person at the end than he was at the beginning, the way all good characters should be.  I am rewriting his words but keeping the heart of who he is -- an innocent and naive creature who must find his own path in his world or always be left aspiring and doing nothing of interest.