Sometimes starting seems impossible

Maybe I should post about why it’s been so long. Maybe I should know what to say about it. I could talk about feeling empty. About apathy. About the feeling that I’ll never make it as a writer and the part of me that thinks it’s not worth it to try. I could talk about work stress, and not having the energy to write after 8+ hours doing a job that isn’t about the flow of words. It’s all of those things. It’s more than those things. It’s about getting stuck in a loop where I know I would feel better if I worked on something creative, that I would manifest the energy to continue if I could only find the energy to start. About how hard starting feels.

Sometimes starting seems impossible. Yesterday I started, posting something that is as much a challenge to myself as it is anything else when I said I would post a First Sentence everyday. I’m going to amend that slightly today – I will post something of my writing everyday.

Today, it’s the very beginning of my novel, currently titled the Way of Attrition:

The scream is agonized. It cuts the cold air, the walls, the closed door, fierce like a siren, too loud and too close. It echoes in the chill that tickles my spine, in the shiver that embraces me.

You can see the first version of this here. It’s the same story, back before I knew it’d be a novel.