A Page a Day Keeps the Crippling Guilt Away...Hopefully.

It's a new year, and what are you doing about it?

Everyone I know is coming up with a million and a half crazy and often unattainable new years resolutions now that the calendar has flipped over from a 12 to a 13. I see them posting on Facebook and talking about it at work and they all seem to be so dead set on "losing that weight" or "saving that money," maybe "finding more time for themselves" or "being a better friend."

I'm making a blog.

Simplifying my resolution comes down to that. I am here, figuring out this bloggy software, trying to do what I've never done before: finish something.

It's 2013, and almost a decade ago, I started a story when I was sitting in the orthodontist's office. Their fully functioning fishtank in the corner held lots of coral sculptures and bubbles, but absolutely no fish.

It was a weird, writerly observation, and in the first of many weird, writerly observations I would make for the next 9 years, I decided, "this would be a good first line for a story."

Braces tightened and teeth achey, I went to school. And when I yanked out my cluttered and disasterous excuse for a binder, I wrote on a piece of notebook paper:

"No fish," I said.

Thus, Halfer was born.

It would morph over the next nine years. What started out as the amalgamation of dozens of books and comics and anime that I was watching and reading would turn into a fifteen-year-old's epic romance, a sixteen-year-old's sword and sorcery fiction, and on and on, until it was barely recognizable as the story I initially set out to write.

Now, it's a labor of intense love. A story about a girl, who has too many secrets kept from her, who has emotions she doesn't fully understand and is trying so hard to keep a grip on her own life...all while dealing with elves and shapeshifters and her own magic in a world full of danger and war.

But when I say labor, I mean labor. It's hard, sometimes, to keep it going. I have a dozen different stories going on at the same time and I'm continually being torn between characters and plots. It gets so frustrating sometimes trying to juggle them all that I have a tendency to shut down completely and just go do something else.

Which brings me back to my point: this blog.

My resolution is not to learn to cook, or to lose weight (all things I spent last year doing, with mild success, and will continue to do this year) but to finish Halfer. I spent 4 years in school learning the skill and discipline I need to make this happen, and I hope by the end of December 2013 I will have something to start shopping to agents.

This blog is called Writerlust because that is what I have: a desire to write, really, and no direction. Maybe if I put everything I do this year on display for everyone to see, it'll guilt me into trying to actually get something done.

So here goes nothing.