Today I was thinking about the idea that I’d had for a novel, and I decided that I would sit down and try to write for a moment, just to see what would happen. I opened up Scrivener, my go-to writing program. The program opened on the last file that I’d worked on, which happened to be the start of a story. At the time that I wrote it, I thought it was garbage. Reading it anew, my inner editor itched to tweak a few things, but otherwise I thought it was fine, maybe even good? I can’t judge the quality. All I can really say is that, as a reader, I wanted to know what would happen next in the story, and that’s a good sign.
That story-start was in a section of Scrivener that I’d set up for journaling, in a folder labeled “2022.” My last journal entry was from August of that year. I wrote about drought, black American flags, How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter (a book that I was reading at the time but apparently never finished), arthritis pain and other symptoms of aging, and procrastination. Cheerful. Well, at least I didn’t mention Covid. But, 2022 obviously broke my writing mojo, and I’m sure that the Pandemic had a lot to do with that.
Do I feel like I’ve gotten my writing mojo back now? I’m not sure. I’m just tired of the silence. So I created a 2024 folder in Scrivener. I don’t know if I’ll use it, but at least it will be there, beckoning.