A public apology
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Writing
I know this seems like "story-hopping", but I have a confession to make. I have a bunch of good ideas for new stories that would probably pan out in the long run if I could just get the gumption together to write one of them. The problem is, my heart is in another story. I wrote the Cona'Doar Chronicles (hereafter CDC) book I about a year and a half ago, knowing going in that the story was much too big to tell in one book. I knew there would have to be more than one volume when I typed the first word of the first draft. My muse was (and still is) my main character, Flick. She's a lot like me fifteen years ago and a thousand years removed. Her traveling companion, Cislin, has a lot of my sensiblities as an adult, but I relate the most to Flick. Unfortunately, I haven't been very nice to her since the book finished the editing process and went out into the great big world looking for an agent or a publisher.

I've bullied her, called her names, ignored her in favor of characters who are just as important to the story, but not as important to me. She's been neglected in the worse sense of the word, and I haven't been able to make a respectful start to the second book because of it. I've failed miserably in the five or six attempts that I've made. Flick's become a petulant child in the second book, something that is distinctly NOT in her character. She's unsure, yes. She's curious. She's afraid. But she isn't petulant, a bitch, silly, stupid or any of the other words I've called her in my mind in the past nine months or so.

Her attitude (listen to me, I sound like a crazy lady) has stifled every part of my writing. I've been producing servicable stories, but nothing I've been exceptionally proud of and nothing that I can say my whole heart has been in. I've chalked this up to being a writer - writing what sells, what the readers and editors and publishers want - not to the fact that my poor little muse, my Flick, is sulking in the corner, refusing to speak to me, refusing to tell me her story.

So, to that end, I offer a public apology to Flick. Perhaps she will allow me back in, and give me the rest of what I so hungrily took from her in the beginning. It was selfish - and now I realize that it was more for her that CDC I was written, not for me. She's just a voice inside my head, but one that has a tale to tell, and a voice that I should listen to if I would like to have anything worth reading come from my fingers.

I'm sorry, Flick. It won't happen again.