When I set out to write the current project it never occurred to me what I was doing.

I’ve learned over the last 18 days of writing this project that I’d done something I hadn’t planned on. Confronting my past.

I’ve written a few times about the books I felt I was forced to read as a teenager, only to find other books, horror and fantasy novels on my own.

The project has taken my down dirt roads with barely any way of finding the end. It’s led me to places I didn’t know I need to go as well as places I felt were out of the way.

This project started in my head about ten years ago. I saw only the little things. Not the bigger picture. I saw one thing and I tried to write it then only to have it fall away.

I set it aside and left it. Forgetting all about it for a lot of reasons. The main reason was I didn’t want to write in the genre, but writing has a way of bringing things around again.

There will be a glimpse of something in our periphery. It will stay there for a while until we notice it.

After I finished the story from November and put it aside, I felt lost.

I’d written ten novels and though I’d submitted them to agents, they weren’t as complete as I wanted them to be.

I’m still happy I wrote them because they led me to the current project.

When I set out to write this project I never anticipated a lot of things. That it would take me to places I didn’t truly want to go, not to mention the whole pandemic.

Writing for me is about dealing with my life. Confronting things in my childhood has never been easy, but now that I’m writing in the genre I grew up reading it’s helping.

I enjoy this project more than any I’ve written and the world feels familiar as well.

I’m a much better writer and human for going down this rabbit hole and confronting who I was then.

I avoided writing in this genre because of the feelings I have attached to it. They are about who I was as a teenager as well as who I am now. They have been in conflict for a while.

I finally decided the confrontation was worth it.

Now 46,000 words later I’m better able to deal with the story and handle what it entails.

I’m moving forward through our new reality and I’m becoming a better person for it.

Happy writing.