Gosh, how do I say this?

I'll be the first to admit this...over the last year I've done very little writing.

Okay, there was a short period where I did some a few hundred pages of page vomit. It was totally crap writing, but it felt great to puke bits and bytes all over a blank page. Was it a story? No. Could it ever be a story? No. It only represents a few grand of saved fees that a shrink won't get. But it's not a story. Yes, there was a beginning, a middle and an end. There was plenty of conflict. But it never had anything that would make a stranger, which is what most readers are, care on bit for the characters. So, it's page vomit at best.

Over the last year I've learned so much. Not all the lessons were easy ones to learn, but learn them I have finally done.

Writing is a lonely career. As a writer we go to this place within ourselves to create fictional characters. Almost every character I've ever created has come about from a trait, an action or something from real life. Someone said or did something that intrigued me. I wanted to explore what made them say or do that thing. Or something would happen to someone and I was curious about the different ways people might react to such a thing.

I know there are people who don't understand me. They don't understand how I can handle so much alone time. It's part of being a writer.

I have to admit the last six months has had way too much alone time though. I live alone. Because I work the hours I do, I'm the only person in my department at work. So I've spent most of the last six months alone. I've done all my shopping alone. I've eaten almost every meal alone. I've read every book alone. I've watched every movie and every television show alone.

While I've learned a lot about me, it's not a healthy way to live a life. Yet it opened me up in a way that I could finally learn some things that I needed to learn.

It also gave me the time and yes, the freedom, to spend a week watching DVDs. I didn't expect to learn anything from the experience, but learn something is exactly what happened.

I've watched a series that works and was able to figure out why it works as well as it does. It's a wonderful marriage of characters, setting, conflict (internal and external) and pacing.

All those characters that I've created are bouncing around in my head. I'm slightly prejudiced, but I think they're great characters.

Then last night/early this morning, it came to me. The first line of a new book. And it felt great. I repeated it to a friend a few minutes ago. She loved it. She's a tough critic. I explained to her my plan. Because she had the first line of the book, and because she's read some of my works, she got the whole concept.

It feels right. It's the perfect marriage of my writing to date, the setting, the characters and all the story ideas I've explored already and want to explore in the future.

There's still a lot about the idea that I don't have, but the meat is there. I have so much of it already down on paper. And even more of it in my mind. I'd love to have a title. I really want a title, but maybe I'll try something new and start without a title.

What does all this mean?

Very simple. I found what's been missing in my writing.

It's time to go home and create the works that I've spent the last fifteen years trying to produce.