Two years ago I came up with the idea of the "Personal Book Writing Quarter". Last year I made a second attempt which ended with a fizzle almost as quickly as it began. Given this downward trend, I'd planned on skipping this year completely.

While I like the idea of a three month project [one month of planning, one month of writing (fortunately coinciding with NaNoWriMo) and one month of revision (unfortunately coinciding with Christmas)] the hard truth is: you can't plan creativity.

Well, maybe you can, but I can't.

That isn't to say I didn't have high hopes for 2012. For whatever reason, in spite of the lack of progress on this front for decades, I thought fer sure this would be the year. But then two things happened. 1) I got sick; and 2) I got stuck. And the latter was far worse than the former, believe me.

Still, I managed to make some progress on the backstory. And I made great progress on the high level story. But when I got down into the details (you know, all those pesky little words that people seem to care about when they read a book) it just got boring and pointless again. I couldn't seem to connect a good high level idea with a low level implementation. (And I'm certainly not alone in that regard. I'm sure this is exactly what plagues millions upon millions of wannabe writers.)

So I decided to follow Neil Gaiman on Twitter for a couple months. That didn't work.

So then I tried focusing on other projects for a while. But I couldn't come up with any.

So as I looked bleakly at the last quarter of 2012 and thought about doing nothing until next year (or even later) it occurred to me: I just need to give this one more good shot. The fact that this thought happened on Day One of Quarter Four is just all the better.

So here I am. This may work or it may fizzle out just as quickly as it did last year. Either way, I'll let you know on December 22, 2012.

If we're all still here then. 🙂