Howdy, comrades! It feels like it’s been a while, but quite frankly, it’s only been a few days. But as with all my posts, I’ve been musing on some thoughts that have cropped up in my old noggin. Suffice to say, it was rather nostalgic for me this time around.

You see, I’ve you’ve been gullible enough to stick to this blog for the six months it has existed, you most likely recall a post I made a long time ago. Namely, it was a post in which I penned a disease called Manuscript Separation Anxiety.

I’m not usually the kind of person to bring up topics which have been discussed in the past, but I find that this old post relates to me now more than it did in the past. You see, I recently scrapped my novel, and only now am I beginning to feel the after effects of my actions. This manifests in various ways.

I’ve had a harder time composing short stories, due to my development of a new writing style, I’ve been doing a lot more tinkering from behind the scenes in order to plan out my next written work, and I’ve been brainstorming on the kind of tone that I want with my story this time around. Perhaps to some of you this could seem rather negative, and to a certain extent, you are right. The process of making fiction has become a tad more cumbersome than it was beforehand–yet, for some reason, this doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.

Back when I wrote that old post of Manuscript Separation Anxiety, I’d treated it as though it were a plague. As though it was a herculean task to return oneself to the story, a kind of task that was nigh impossible to perform. Yet, as is the hum-drum pattern of life, I’ve been proven wrong on this.

A story is an experience meant to be taken as a whole, so it’s only natural that when I separate myself from it, I’ll be disoriented. But the fact of the matter is that not all experiences are good. Sometimes, we have to abandon the bad experiences so that we can gain a new perspective on how to achieve the good ones.

And this was the case with my old book.

I took in a lot of stupid ideas back then, and I’m not afraid to admit it. But I came out both a better person and writer for being able to feel the dread that came through working with these ideas. I bore through the brunt of the storm that was the old book, and this allowed me to gain a new perspective on how to brave the murky waters that might lead me to a newer, and ultimately, better story.

As always, this has been the QuestingAuthor. Brave the storm, my friends.