Where I bore you with thoughts on writing

I'm in love with the story I'm writing right now. It's how it always is, though, when I pick the right one. I won't talk about my story, of course, it's too raw and new and only in its first draft, and I'm only in the first pages, but I am happy writing it. I can say it's different from all the other ones, and I find that exciting.

Here's what I love about my writing. I'm a fast writer when I have a scene in mind, and can just write and write and write. I love my characters. I think some are wonderful and some are assholes and some are just malicious, and they are always interesting. Though they are my creation, I never really know for sure who they are going to be truly, and what they are going to do, until it's written on the page.

What I don't love? When I don't have a scene in mind, or I'm at a shaky point in the story where things don't seem to be flowing right, well, then every keystroke is torture. Every word agony. Sentences? Ha. They kill me.  Doubt rolls in. Do I even know where the story is going? Is this an actual plot? Maybe I'm writing the wrong thing! I should have done the other story idea. Did the story reach a dead-end, because there is no actual path for it to follow, because it's the worst idea ever in the history of writing?

The last I toss aside. There's no way I could ever come up with the worst idea ever in the history of writing. There are waaaay worse ideas than mine.

The only cure for when I don't have a scene in mind, of course, is to write one anyway. It's easier with every story I write. Sometimes, if I do hit that dead-end, it's just that I need to go back to an earlier point and move forward, or to a later point, and write backwards. Writing linearly is not necessarily a requirement. I'm one of those writers that don't really believe in writer's block. I think that writer's block is either a lack of discipline in writing, or a need to reflect on the story before moving on with it. Sometimes, before you can write more in a story, if you come to a point you can't move past, you need to let it sit for a week or so.

I just wrote 1700 words, and they are mostly good words, keeper words. It was a good day of writing, today.