Then Alice Sees Another Bunny

Image by jvoves via Flickr

I'm wrapping up the Muse Online Writers Conference today. Tomorrow is cut and paste day in the forums, thanks to a network failure that occurred Monday and lasted through most of Tuesday. I got behind on assignments, and then I just said that little phrase I say when it's all over but the crying. I downloaded the new handouts, snagged the freebies, read what I could, and that was all I could do. It's my own fault really. I signed up for too much. Moderation is not one of my strong points. I couldn't help myself. I was like a starving woman at a buffet when I saw all the workshops. You have to realize that I'm coming off a 10 year block due to grief and trauma. I just started writing again this past spring. I haven't been to a Writers Conference since 1994. Not writing a word in ten years was like being in a never-ending nightmare, and I woke up and tried to catch up on everything I had missed.

Since I was a teenager it's been my dream to be a novelist. That's really all I ever wanted to be. Insecurity and fear kept me from showing my work to anyone other than family. Fear of rejection kept me from submitting my work even in high school. I kept writing in my 20's and 30's, and shoved the manuscripts in a drawer.

I buried my high school sweetheart and the father of my children at 33. And I stopped writing. I remarried a year later. This husband knew I had written about every detail of my life prior to our marriage. He read my work in secret. He was an extremely paranoid person, and thought I'd write about him. In 2004, he burned everything I'd ever written. Over thirty poems, a dozen short stories, more than a dozen journals, and the beginnings of a novel all went up in flames right before my eyes. He was shot to death the next day, and I witnessed the shooting. And I lost my last husband on Sept. 11, 2007. (Yes, that makes three. Yes, the last one really was the last one.)

So, after all those funerals and a lot of therapy, I'm through being afraid. Life is too short. I have too much to say. The words will not be contained anymore. They want out, and I'm letting them escape.

I committed to NaNoWriMo back in the summer. I just want to finish. That will bring me one step closer to that dream I had when I was 14 and read "The Shining" by Stephen King. I was blown away. I looked over my shoulder for three days, and could not get the story out of my head. And I knew then what I wanted to do the rest of my life. Write novels.

I've got characters, a setting, and a plot. And now I've got another story in my mind, and I don't know which one to tell first. Now, which plot bunny to follow down which rabbithole? Someone said tell both. Maybe I will.

Hurry up, November!