On Common Ground

My favorite time to cruise blogs is first thing in the morning while drinking my first cup of coffee, and getting my schedule straight for the day. It's also a great source of inspiration for blog subjects of my own at times. This one however hit home with both frightening, and in a warped way, exhilerating clarity. I have something in common with a nationally known best-selling author! No, I mean something really meaningfully in common with her.

When a New York Times Best-Selling author gives you an insight to his/or her own emotional writer turmoil, and you suddenly feel like their seperated at birth twin, you know you've hit the jack-pot. The NYT is just the next step on the ladder. LOL

Okay, enough already, here's what I read. The FANTASTIC Tess Gerritsen wrote a blog entry on a writing workshop she and fellow writer Michael Palmer conducted recently. Although this section I related to was but a small part of her entry, it became the entire world to me for a brief moment.

She said: Even after years as bestselling novelists, both Michael and I admitted that we still get scared every time we start a new book. We wonder how we did it the last time, and whether we can pull it off again. We told them that just coming up with ideas for our next books makes us lose sleep.

I kid you not, JUST last night I started a brand new -- hope to be -- novel, and that exact same thought pounded in my brain until I could barely look at the computer screen.

You know, it must be something in the air screaming at me to write this story even if I think it's insane, and hasn't a snowball's chance in a very hot place to do anything but collect dusk under my bed. I also happened to turn to a page in one of my writer's magazines this morning and it just happened to have a quote in it that read: "It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does."--William Faulkner

Now trust this, I am not comparing myself to either Tess Gerritsen, or William Faulkner--but it sure is nice to know I have so much in common with such great writers.

No more worries--just write.