Twice now I've written a few paragraphs in this big empty box and twice now I've deleted what I wrote. Funny how you get words out, a beginning, a bit of characterization and then, on a whim and with the push of a button, it's gone, as if it never existed. Just like that, Sam the girl who's lover had just been killed and Unnamed Character #2 who was in the middle of dumpster-diving and being jealous of people who threw perfectly good pizzas away are gone.

Weird.

I began this a few minutes ago with no direction or any idea of what I wanted to write - I only felt a compulsion to write *something* and those two characters emerged from the old noggin. Then I got to thinking that a) I don't want to write about love and loss, and b) neither do I want to write about a poor homeless waif struggling on the mean streets.

God I'd kill for a decent story idea. Can't focus. Part of me wants to write some mindless fanfic just to get back into practice. Part of me wants to not use fanfic as a crutch and just get serious about it already. Wonder if a freewrite would be helpful.

Oh hell I'll give it a go. The following babble is a result of 10 minutes of uninterrupted trains of thoughts and streams of consciousness. Feel free to skip it because my brain's pretty weird.

Aaaand go.

SO I want to write. Always wanted to churn out something wicked and delicious and that makes readers go 'guh' after they read it. But never felt like I could pull it off. I always feel unfocused. I've written fanfic in the past. Years ago in fact and only in a specific genre which I will not name here for fear that it's still out there on the net somewhere, floating and lost. And I'll say it. I was good. I had actual fans. Complete strangers would email me and tell me they loved my writing. People who had no connection to me, no reason to "be nice" because they knew me or whatever. Fanfic is dangerous in a way because it can totally feed a writer's ego. I became SUCH the feedback whore. I loved it and the more I got the more I wrote. And when I sort of grew away from that fandom and stopped writing fanfic, the feedback was the hardest thing to give up. So I started this blog oh so long ago in the hopes it would encourage m to write my own stuff instead of using established characters and putting them into whatever dark situations my mind could come up with. Tried nanowrimo, felt like too much work gave up on it. Couldn't get a workable story. that's always been my problem. Following a story through to conclusion. Mom used to write out elaborate character sketches. She filled notebooks with them and story ideas would be written in the margins of notebooks. I don't do that. That's what this blog was supposed to be really. My launching pad. And so, when the itch comes back to write I'll have a place to scratch it. I have stuff I have to get past though. See previous post about fears and obstacles that make me give up. And I have to condition myself to actually use this place for crap like this that will only be interesting to me to read. Know it's out there in blogland for anyone to stumble across but with all the noise out there, I hardly think this will draw attention.

Ok not quite ten minutes but I stopped because It ain't helping and this laptop keyboard is teh suck.

I'm giving myself an exercise though. I'm taking an hour, shutting off the XM, shutting my bedroom door, asking the kid to keep the cat away from me and I'm going to pour out as many story ideas i can think of in here no matter how lame and then sift through the muck and see if anything's viable. Will do this later today.