Why This One

 To be honest, talking about works in progress feels small in light of Ukraine being attacked and invaded right after the 'governor' of Texas declared open season on trans kids, their parents, and any professional supporting them. It's hard to feel like anything I do matters at the moment. But. The hard fact is that I cannot do anything remotely useful about either situation except to say I'll fight for trans people the only way I know how: at the voting booth, by supporting organizations specifically helping trans youth, and by supporting the legal groups that will take apart Abbott's nonsense political posturing. To support Ukraine, I can donate to chef Jose Andres who is taking his mission to the region to feed those in need, whether it be refugees, other aid workers, or Ukrainian troops.

Then I recognize that I can write a story that might give someone else a few moments of escape and rest. We use the tools we have, right? So why this story? 

I'm working on book four of my space opera series. It's the next logical step in the story arc and there are a few issues that have to be worked out in this story before the final book in the series. I like the characters. I like the premise. I like where the book needs to go and where it needs to take the characters. But something hasn't been right about it for a long time. I think I've finally figured it out. I had the heroine's core goal at odds with her core wound. 

Psychology Tik Tok likes to make clear in three minute snippets that the wounds we internalized as children lead to our unhealthy coping mechanisms as adults. After spending some time feeling called out by a bunch of videos I thought I was scrolling for entertainment, it hit me that I'd gotten my heroine's issues wrong. I'd imagined she had a people pleasing problem. She doesn't. She has an abandonment issue. That changes everything. It changes her action. It changes her thinking. It changes her conflict with the hero. 

It changes the fact that up to this point, I haven't liked this story. Now, if we talk about why this WIP I can say, "Because finally I get to go have fun in this story."

Fuel for the Fire

I love all of this week's posts. Excellent, thoughtful, high-minded reasons for writing. I wish I could jump on the band wagon. But I can't. Cause I stand firmly on a line. It reads 'CRAZY'. Allow me to explain.

You know when you think you're alone and you aren't just talking to yourself, you're having entire conversations? The voices in your head are addressing you and it would be super impolite not to answer back? Only you do so aloud and it turns out you weren't alone and now everyone is looking at you like you belong in a straitjacket?

What?

Only me? Damn. That is totally why I write. Why I have to write. There's a throng in my head. I mean, sure, we all know we have voices residing in the gray matter. Mostly the voices of our parents and other loved ones, right? Most of us can still hear Mom telling us that if we keep making that face, it's going to stick that way. Those are the normal ones. The expected.

That's not all that goes on for me. It's crowded upstairs - crowded with a bunch of people and voices whose names and faces I do not know and never have known. From time to time, one or two edge out of the crowd, pull me aside, and they tell me who they are. From that point, I have no choice. If I don't start writing, I'll be on my way to an involuntary hold in a psych ward some where because those voices will not leave me alone ever again until I get their story down.

I get that this sounds like hyperbole and I can see you rolling your eyes from here, but I swear this is a thing. I can call my mother. We'll be chatting about everything under the sun BUT writing and out of the blue, she'll say, "You aren't writing, are you? I can hear it. Get off this phone and go work before it gets any worse." Every single time, she's right. There's a pressure that builds up inside - a little like that Alien movie - something trying to claw its way out through my sternum. It isn't comfortable. The only remedy is to get words down. Get a story on a page.

That's the fuel. And so long as I use it wisely, I avoid psychoactive medications and I eventually get a book out of the deal. So while I'd love to tell you I have some great intellectual drive or will of iron that gets from Chapter One to The End, it's more a feeling of responsibility to those voices inhabiting my head because each individual in the crowd is awaiting a turn - a chance to come to life on the page.

So maybe, the real truth is that the fuel for writing is as much a god complex, an over developed sense of responsibility and stunning hubris.

Or I'm just nuts.