Riding the Wild Horse of Creativity

There’s something beautiful about getting to your knees in the middle of a road and scrawling in a notebook as fast as your hand can write. Okay, so it was a dirt road, and there wasn’t any traffic, but still.

I continue to be blown away by the intensity of my creative process. The more I indulge my imagination, the more ideas flood in, just like this quote by Maya Angelou: “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”

Maybe you know what I’m talking about. All of us have something within us that longs to be expressed, in whatever form makes sense to you, be it music, art, writing, surfing, dancing, or anything else.

My twin boys are going to be 2 years old next month. I’ve written 3 full-length novels since half-way through my pregnancy (three and a half novels, ahem). I’ve queried two of them, learned a ton, and just submitted my latest to Pitch Wars.

Writing is what I do for me. You know, when I’m not working my booty off taking care of my kids, including the furry ones. Writing keeps me sane. No, let’s not debate my loose hold on sanity, I’ll rephrase: Writing keeps me from losing my mind entirely.

This last book was a wild ride. The rough draft happened in 45 days. I say “happened,” because it was less like I was making it happen, and more like I was holding on for dear life, getting the words out so they didn’t run me over.

I didn’t know I was going to submit to Pitch Wars until a few days before the submission window opened. Yeah. Nothing like flying by the seat of my pants. ‘Course, that’s pretty much the story of my life.

Now, along with all the other hopefuls who submitted, I get to wait. It’s like querying agents, but far more encouraging. For one, there’s this incredible, fun, vibrant community that has been created by all the people involved in the contest. The Twitter feed is full of tweets that make me smile. And who doesn’t need to smile more, right?

Though the waiting allows my mind to jump through revolving hoops of self-doubt and self-confidence, it also makes for a great window of networking. Which is part of the genius of PitchWars. I can only guess how many new followers all the mentors are getting, but I didn’t expect to see my own connections grow so fast. Hadn’t thought about it. ((shrugs)) Okay with me.

We’re all in it for a chance of receiving top-notch mentoring and possibly making the dream of publishing come true, but at the same time, the community is blowing me away! I love it!