Contradictions, or Sleeping Beauty Attacks My Brain

Recently I have been dying to write something. Anything. I've been in a kind of gloomy mood, which is perfect for my 2011 NaNo novel. But there have been 2 major problems. The first is my schedule. Now I know that I could find time to write if I really wanted to, but I haven't. And that is closely related to the second problem. Both WIPs are in the now-I-need-to-figure-out-what's-going-on-here-so-I-can-actually-do-this-rewrite stage. I have the bones of the story, but I really can't write anything until I do some character development, figure out world-building stuff, and other such things. I ponder them in the car. In fact, I had a giant AHA moment just last night. But overall, it's a different kind of creative from the actual writing part and my brain just can't do it at the moment. I think it's too close to the stuff I'm doing for school and teaching.

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Anyhoo. So I've been all gloomy and mopey inside myself. For no reason, just a little blah. Maybe because of the weird weather. But, to quote Polonius, let me be brief. And to quote Clue, TOO LATE.

So I came up with this great first line for a short story, but I couldn't think of anything else, so I shelved that to work on later.

And then I had to read Anne Sexton's Transformations for one of my classes. It's a book of poetry where she retells a bunch of Grimm's fairy tales. And they were pretty interesting, even though I'm generally not a big poetry fan. (I know, an English major that doesn't like poetry OR Jane Austen?! How can this be?!)

Well a tiny little thing in her retelling of Sleeping Beauty got me thinking and the other night I sat down when I should have been doing research and pounded out a rough opening paragraph to a short story.

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I thought the story would match my emotional tone of gloom and sadness, but instead, Miss Sleeping Beauty attacked the page with this saucy, snappy attitude. Guys, she even said "horse poo" right there in the first section.

I'm just as shocked as you guys are. Just. As. Shocked.
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And you know what? It was exactly what I needed to write. It made me feel better about a lot of things. And, I'm just realising, it came right before my revelation about Solo. Whether that's a coincidence or not, I don't know, but I felt all inspired and writer-y again after typing it.

So my advice, which you can take or leave considering I have never published a book and currently have 3 rough drafts waiting for rewrites, is to have fun. Go where your imagination takes you. Sometimes it will provide exactly the break you need to allow you to see something else more clearly.

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Ahem. I may have gone a little overboard with the animal pictures, but really. Aren't they adorable?!