I can remember when I started writing (sixth grade, started with poetry), but I can’t remember when I started wanting to be a writer.

As in, someone who gets paid to write books.

I also can’t say exactly how many novels I’ve started. Then stopped. Then sneered at the very idea of. Then started again on another. My guess is around 10. Some of those stories I’ve held onto. They’re in there, rattling around my brain like loose coins in the bottom of my purse, collecting lint and sticky residue from rogue pieces of spearmint gum. And maybe someday they’ll be told. Maybe I’ll fish them out and wipe them off and spend them.

But not right now.

Right now, I’m actually working on something. A something that’s grown to 26,000 words. That prods at my subconscious as I try to do “real work”…you know, the kind that pays my rent. A something I can’t wait to get back to — even when I left it, I was stuck, and no bolt of creative lightening has struck me in the interim.

This is terribly inconvenient.

Because I’m also training for a marathon. And just recently started dating a very nice man. And it’s summer, which should be self-explanatory.

But it’s taken hold of me, and I it, and I adore it all. Even when it doesn’t make sense. Even when I know the details don’t line up. Even when my character says something trite.

Because it’s a shitty first draft. 

And because for the first time ever, it looks as though it will end up a completed shitty first draft.