Guts and imagination

Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. -- Sylvia Plath

Ah, self-doubt. Anyone know anything about that? Oh, wait. That's my hand that shot up in the air and then flew down only to creep back up, slowly. Yep, self-doubt.

I wrote a novel a few years back, actually finished it about three years ago. I was over the moon. It was before I was really into the screenwriting business. It was back when I was just a writer. I wrote and wrote and wrote. And I finally had this thing, this book, to hold in my hands. And hold I did. I copied it that December and gave a copy to my parents and several grandparents. I heard people enjoyed it though I don't know if I ever saw anyone reading it or if anyone had anything specific to say about it. I have one of those copies here and each time I run across it in the closet, I want to cry.

I love this book. I love the story. I love the characters. They are real to me. They are real and they are stuck in a closet gathering dust and hiding under a box of CD cases I'll never use but can't seem to part with. Why? Because I don't know what to do with this book I've made. This thing I've created.

I'm not sure what I thought would happen to it (okay, that's a lie - I was planning on giving it to my agent when I got one through my glorious screenwriting career) but nothing has, so far. That qualifier is the only thing that holds me - so far. I won't let that self-doubt stop me.

Today I start a rewrite. The novel is long, too long, for a first-time writer to get published so I need to cut. Kill my babies, as we say in writing circles. I need to edit and restructure and tame it. No small feat but nothing I can't handle. (Famous last words...)

So here I go. And hopefully, sometime in the near future, you'll be able to hold your very own copy of An every day silence by Sarah Knapp. Guts and imagination, here we go!