Turning into a different person

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Trinidad Head from Saturday, 11 January 2025. It was blowy and cold, but nice to observe from inside the car.

"I don't see how anybody can predetermine how their movie is going to turn out, or why anybody would want to, because it's a creative thing that is changing every day, and you're changing every day while you work on it. You start to make a movie, and when you finish it you'll be a different person."- Barbara Loden

I read this quote earlier today and obviously it struck a chord. Not that I'm planning to make a movie soon (or ever). Only that I'm hoping to start writing soon (or ever again). And the first (long) line proffered me a whole lotta freedom.

I have notions how the story will end, snippets of ideas for the middle, but no clear path for how to get from Chapter 3 (because I'm keeping Chapters 1 & 2 that I wrote last year) to say, Chapter Question Mark. I don't even know how lengthy of a story this will be. Not The Hawk long, or please Lord I hope not! But maybe a novella. A novella would be F-I-N-E fine! At this point, I just wanna WRITE!

But do I want to become a different person? Oooohhh, that's one helluva query! I think I do, or I am, ready, that is. Ready to write, to change, to, to.... Move on with this series, my persona as a spinner of yarns, new yarns. Publishing novels is great, don't misconstrue, but you can't release them if you don't liberate them from your brain, heart, and soul. My soul is in dire need of some renovation, in the noveling department, in the moving forward from crappy politics and that maelstrom. I'm eager for typing more than these entries, more than excerpt alts for Bluesky posts. I'm so freaking READY (as well as scared a little shiteless) to delve into another world where.... Where I'm sort of in control! Oh yeah, that's really it, even if change occurs because personal change is at times unnerving, rattling, scary. But scary is the next four years here in America, so....

But enough of that. More important is Barbara Loden's quote. She was spot-on, brave, well before her time. She was an actress that directed a movie I'd never heard of, but click-click-click and there I found her, or rather she found me on a day when I needed a huge reminder of why I write, why I breathe a creative life. Why I need to stop frickin' procrastinating and WRITE THE DANG BOOK!

Soon, I promise myself. As soon as I publish Splitting the Sky, well, a week or two after that. Really. I promise. 

I promise.

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