A New Start

I swear, figuring out how to start a story must be the hardest part of writing one. I started working on "The Crown of Pluto" today, and for all that I managed to somehow put down about 1,500 words, it felt like it was a struggle every step of the way. 

I finished the draft of "Sneakatara Boatman and the Priest of Loki" about six weeks ago. After that, I spent some time rewriting a couple of older stories and then going back through "Priest" in an effort to clean it up before Christmas. That went pretty well, so I followed it up by dashing off a quick 5,000 words of "Elaina Emboo: A Wizard of Wanderhaven," and by the end of that, I felt like I was in the zone.  But by then I was dreaming about this stuff pretty much every night; it felt like literally the only thing I ever thought about. So I forced myself to take maybe two weeks off from writing--completely--and that was great, but now coming back feels like working a muscle that's atrophied away to nothing. 

I'm a big believer in offseasons, but I'm getting to the point where I see what Jerry Rice was driving at with his constant training regime. I mean, I know that both body and mind need rest, but man, coming back from that rest is never easy. 

Well. I got something down today, and if the words themselves aren't worth anything, I think the structure of the scenes, the way the story's started, is (hopefully, maybe) worth something. But I guess time will tell.