I have been spending a lot of time reflecting, usually in the middle of the night during the hours in which everyone is asleep and I'm alone with my thoughts. It is like a Dustin tradition for that to be the case, and likely why - for as long as I can remember - it has been so much easier for me to stay up all night and sleep all day. Adult version of me, if ever there is such a thing, doesn't have the luxury of sleeping all day, however, so I just go without the sleep part.
Anyway, naturally, major life events lead to a lot more of this reflective nature. It isn't a beautiful process whatsoever to be up until 3 a.m. on a work night, then up at 7 a.m., all for the sake of thinking about the deeply embedded ways that I have to reset my brain just to become a normal human being again, but here we are.
But one of the most beautiful things that does happen in the midst of all the turmoil is putting words to pages. Months ago, I found myself in a position where writing about anything outside of the direct events felt impossible, and I suppose that is ok in itself, but the creative writing is something so much more pleasurable for me. Writing a short story feels like a jumpstart to something that feeds into bigger works. Often times it is the start of these big ideas for a novel that, after a few chapters, die off in silence. The words get put to the page, they do this thing where it starts off with relative weakness, ramps up, then loses all steam. I will tell myself I will get back onto the train of whatever big idea it was, but it just resides there like all the other creations people can imagine but not have the gumption to follow through with.
But, something magical happened the other day. I went to write, and initially it was a journal entry. Just sorting out emotions the way I've been doing when I write my journal entries. But then, oh then, I decided to open up a document page and just start writing. Out of the pits of nothingness came what felt so good to be putting to page - alright, to be totally fair, it may be one of the most depressing things I've ever written - but the depth in which resides in it, I dare say, may turn into one of the best things I've ever written.
I just finished the first chapter and the feeling I got the moment I put the period on that last line of the first chapter, fuck, it felt exactly as good as it did a decade ago and I was writing my first novel (that will never see the light of day, more than likely).
And this may never see the light of day, either. I think it would be a hard sell based on the opening chapter in general, but it felt so good that I had to at least share it here.
-Dustin S. Stover
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