I’m at my parents’ house for Yom Kippur and I want a snack. But Yom Kippur is all about fasting and atoning for your sins, so I can’t have a snack.

Grumble grumble.

Anyway, last week I decided to start writing a novel.

It’s something I’ve tried to do several times in the past. One of the stories I used in my writing class this summer originally started out as the beginning of an attempted novel. (Maybe I’ll even turn it into one at some point.) And I tried National Novel Writing Month a few years back. Last week I was experiencing writer inspiration/frustration, and I finally decided to give it a shot again.

I started last Thursday, and I’m going to try to do a little bit each day, no matter how little. I think that if I lower the bar and just set a goal of a few paragraphs a day, it will be less intimidating and easier to accomplish.

I have no ideas for a plot. I just started with a sentence that seemed halfway interesting and took it from there. I don’t think I’m even going to use the sentence I started with, but it was a trigger for other stuff.

One problem (and it has been one throughout my writing life) is that I constantly second-guess what I’m doing or thinking of. “This idea has been done before, I read a book that used it,” or “This isn’t original enough,” or “Who wants to read another [xyz] story,” and so forth. But I’m trying to silence the voices and just try to write something that I would want to read.

This is not necessarily easy. I went to a book store a few days ago to find books about writing – there are a few that got good reviews on Amazon – but the ones I looked at were focused on writing what sells, as opposed to writing what you want. I put one book back on the shelf after reading a sentence that said something like, “Your main character must be likable and heroic. Nobody wants to read a book with an unlikable protagonist.” Confederacy of Dunces, anyone? I was annoyed.

I wound up picking up a book called Unstuck, about getting past writer’s block. I find that inspirational-type books on writing can really help get my juices flowing, especially since what I usually need most is confidence.

I’ve written about 2,100 words of this attempt at a book so far, which is already more than I thought I would get down. So that’s a good sign.

Anyway, you’re all forbidden to ask me about this writing project unless I say you can. I need to keep my novel-writing space private and protected from the world.

Which is totally why I’m blogging about it, of course.