Creative Every Day 2009 - STOS # 2

I joined Creative Every Day 2009 challenge over the Easter break. This challenge is to serve as an anchor to my writing project STOS* and daily free writing for the year. I’ll be sharing with both the Creative Every Day 2009 community and all fellow bloggers the progress and issues I have about STOS during the year.

I’ve started STOS # 2 last week. The starting point of this story was different to STOS # 1. For # 1 I had the ending fixed in my mind. Hence the writing of # 1 was to work out how the character got to the end point. With # 2 all I had was a scene where the main character was doing a very specific thing. I’m not sure if this scene is to be treated as the opening, middle or ending. However, since I have long decided that I’m not going to question too much of what I’m doing when I’m writing up 1st draft, I just dived in.

As soon as I sat down in front of the blank screen to write STOS # 2, my heart began to pound hard and fast. (No kidding here!) I kept thinking what if nothing came to my mind? What if I cannot pull it off this time? The anxiety was so intense that it was truly debilitating. I jumped out of the chair and walked around in circles until my heart rate came down.

I was arguing with myself if I was to start the story or waited for another couple of days. And I remembered Eric Maisel’s book "Write Mind" which I had started to re-read after I finished # 1 about two weeks ago. I flipped to the page where I had placed a lime green marker. My eyes rest on a small paragraph with the title: Right Silence. I remembered what it was and followed the instruction to quiet not only the mind but my entire being. I went back in front of my laptop and typed out the first 200 words of # 2.

This experience had taught me these:

1) No matter how many stories I’ve written, I always feel anxious to start a new one.

2) It is always a good idea to have a few good motivational books nearby in case like this. I have chosen for this project to "hire" Eric Maisel (via his books) as my creativity coach. :) And I have a feeling that he'll be a great help to me. We shall see!

* STOS - 12 stories based loosely on a common theme which I had developed over last Christmas break.