If you’re anything like me, when you’re writing a novel there’s always something out there that you can’t stop noticing. You could call it the fly on the newsreel, the signature on the painting, whatever you like, but it’s there and you can’t get rid of it. If you’re anything like me you’re beginning to understand that it’s your own perception. You can’t get away from it. If you’re anything like me you don’t know what to believe anymore.

Quite often this is how I feel

It wasn’t long ago that I expressed my frustration over my own confusion. It wasn’t long ago that I honestly didn’t know whether or not the novel would continue. I feared that I’d lost my attachment to it, my interest. I worried that reading one more paragraph would’ve made me sick. In fact reading another paragraph did make me sick and I had to put it down. I couldn’t stand it anymore.

So I sulked. I spent an entire weekend doing nothing except making pots of various teas and lamenting my lack of productivity. I picked up a book for the first time in months and managed to read a good chunk of it. I decided that I had to watch one of my favorite movies and so invited several people over to watch As Good as it Gets. By the time I went to bed that Sunday I’d stopped sulking.

Toward the middle of this week I gave myself a kind of pep talk. Wasn’t I once passionate? Wasn’t I once obsessed? Wasn’t I once incapable of putting down the novel? What had changed? I thought back to the second draft, how the stretch leading up to it was a similar kind of torpor. I decided that I can’t be happy with my writing unless I’m actively writing, actively perfecting. In the middle of the second draft I was nothing short of manic. Creativity—that’s what’s been missing.

Last night I started working again. I made all the necessary changes to the first chapter and for the first time in over a month I feel good about my novel. What I’m thinking of now is all the possibility ahead of me. Yes the novel needs a lot of work, but why not fall in love again? Why not accept that joy derived from crafting a wonderful sentence? There’s a lot to fix but I’m going to fix it. I feel electric again, capable again. I feel like I’m writing again. And this is only the beginning. Once I get moving, both of us, the novel and I, will feel much better.