You’re a liar, Malcolm Reynolds!

4500 words. Usually novels, as one measures things these days, are between 70,000 and 100,000 words long.

It’s said a journey starts with a single step, and this is mine.

Having written nothing in the last few years – well, that’s perhaps a bit of a stretch. Having written nothing of substance and written even less with any intentions of following through in the last few years, it’s been extremely hard to begin again.

My understanding of grammar hasn’t been forgotten, nor the vocabulary I’ve so carefully nurtured. If anything, my knowledge in these areas has grown. (I know what an Oxford comma is now!) I’ve read more and more in the last year to make up for the years of having read little to nothing, and what I have been reading, I’ve been parsing intimately for craft. More than just the style or plot integrity, it’s also characterization. I know I’ve been absolutely crap to watch a movie or TV show with this last year, because I’m in such an analytical mode that “just for fun” is sometimes such a willful suspension of disbelief that I refuse to allow.

Even if novel-length fiction is my medium, there are things to learn from all written mediums, including screen-writing, and even things to learn from how that script is acted out in the finished product. I’ve even been learning about the delicate relationship between writer and reader (or viewer) as various TV shows have been born and ended. There’s a kind of contract involved. Sure, a writer is allowed to write, and sure the endings or changes won’t always be what the recipient wants (ship wars describe this fallout intensely). But the writer is expect to write well. No matter how the fan/viewer/reader feels, the writer should be true to the characters and to the integrity of the story.

I didn’t know these things beforehand. I wrote with the idea that I should at least do it right, but I spared little attention for why or how. When people liked things I’d written, I rarely tried to parse what worked or what didn’t.

I know that when writers experience droughts like these, it hurts. It certainly hurt me. I’d even begun to question whether I’d ever write again. Maybe I’m lucky, but this spell of idleness (writing-wise, anyway) turned out to be a ridiculously good thing for my craft. I learned the theory, I learned the methods, I learned to pay attention.

And even if I’m slow, even if I have to edit 4 or 5 times to get a scene on paper the way it was in my head, I am better off than I was. I’ll get better at it, hone the edges of my writing so that it isn’t so clunky, hone my discipline so that I don’t have to spend a few days planning before I can finally get to work.

But the point is that I’m writing. And this time around, I’m doing it right.