Creative Writing

For several years, I've toyed with the idea of writing a novel. Writing has always been something I've enjoyed, and something that has always been affirmed in me. Teachers all through school, even into college, always told me I was a writer. I didn't know what to do with that until about six years ago. That's when I got my first story idea. I went so far as to write out a brief synopsis, but it never went beyond that. I still have those notes, and I may do something with it at some point. Who knows.

About two years ago, however, I came up with a new story idea. It started with a simple idea: what would it really be like to know how your life would play out? Would this be a good or a bad thing? And from there, I began to dream up a story about a man who was granted that very gift. The story intrigued me, and I actually tried to hand it off to a friend who's a much better writer than I am. But then I realized that this was my story... if it was to be written, I would have to do it.

So here we are, two years later, and I'm nearly halfway there. It's been a learning experience all the way around. I've written creative stories before, but never to this scale. To date, I've written 32,000 words, which, as I understand it, is less than half of the 80,000 words that most would consider the minimum length of a novel. The exciting part is that I actually think I have at least 48,000 more words of story to tell. We'll see.

This week I actually took some time off to resume writing. Here's a brief excerpt of what I wrote yesterday:

The next four years passed like the turning of more pages. And there was that thought in Oliver’s head again: pages - crisp, prophetic pages. The thought of it haunted his dreams every night since that conversation with Jon. There was that name again: Jon. The name of a friend he hadn’t seen or talked to in over six years; the name of someone who had loved him more than anyone else, and yet walked away from him like everyone else.

Writing is fun. It's therapeutic. I may stink at grammar, make a few rookie mistakes in story-telling, and will likely never get published. But that's not the point for me. I just enjoy the process. I'm very much looking forward to the day when I can step back and say, "It's finished." Who knows... I may even start another one. I just hope it doesn't take another two years to get to that point.