Remember when I was a person who wrote things?
I was genuinely shocked when I realized it’s been over two years since I’ve updated Perigean Spring. It never felt that long to me, but then again, a lot has changed for me over these two years. I won’t go into all of it, but I’ll tell you that the UT of late 2017 would never have imagined she’d be where the UT of early 2020 is. Some of the changes have been good, some bad, but overall, I’m really sad I haven’t kept up with writing, when it used to be something that made me so happy.
Over the past few years, I’ve become very critical of the first couple chapters of Perigean Spring. I started writing them in 2013. I added to them like they were loosely-related drabbles, and didn’t have a plot in mind, then never did a cohesive edit or rewrite when I decided to start posting them. For a while, this has been holding me back. I’ve felt kind of discouraged by them, and while I like the idea of going back and fixing them, I’m not sure that I have the mental energy to do that, given the everything else going on in my life.
For a long time, I let that idea, that I should fix the start before I kept writing any more, serve as sort of a block. It felt like a good idea, but really it was an excuse to not put time into newer chapters. The thing is, though, I really, really liked writing Perigean Spring. Even if the beginning isn’t the most solid. So I’m going to do my best to let go of that insecurity, and instead focus back on the fact that even if it’s not the most perfect piece that I could pull together, writing and telling a story that makes me happy takes precedence over fine-tuning every sentence of chapters I’ve already published.
I really want to write in a way that makes me happy again, and I’m going to do my best to do more of that in 2020. I’m not discarding the idea of going back and editing some parts of the earlier chapters entirely, but I’m going to try to put it on the backburner while I remember how to just sit down and enjoy writing.
