Taking the leap

As promised, here’s the scoop on the workshop with Randy Susan Myers Saturday:

1. I came in thinking all I had was a jumble of research that would never amount to anything.
2. I left thinking there’s a story in there after all.

I don’t know how much was the sensible ideas and pushing that Randy Susan Myers did to all of us, and how much was just being jolted out of my torpor, my feeling as though I’d completely forgotten how to write now that the manuscript I’ve been working on for a year and a half is on submission.

I also left knowing that part of what has been stopping me from progressing, from getting beyond research, is that this story has to have a real, historical figure as its protagonist, and that scares me. So many people do that incredibly well. I am not one of them. I’ve always made my stories revolve around real historical figures.  my main characters are mostly fictional. Or I take ones about whom very little is known, or at times of their lives that have not been well documented.

As I continue to read about my protagonist and her world, I get more and more frightened—and more and more certain this is what I have to do.

Writing. A. Novel. Is. Hard. Have I said that before?