Lately, I've felt like someone took the training wheels off my bike and I'm setting off for the first time without them. This will be the first year that I won't restart school in the fall, the first year without professors as impromptu mentors. The first year without workshops or the environment that pushes me to write. A few days ago, I finished a revision of a travel narrative (creative nonfiction) that I wrote for a class. I contacted my professor, with whom I'm on decent terms, and asked if she'd be willing to workshop the story with me. She's insanely busy and hasn't responded yet. So today, I researched lit mags deeper, chose four, and submitted the story anyway. It's time that I trust myself and work on my own. My pedal has made a complete revolution and I'm still balanced on the bike. Only if each one rejects me will I totter or fall. But what if one doesn't? What if I encounter another magazine like Separate Worlds (which recently accepted a fantasy short story; my very first acceptance for fiction) that gives me a chance? Then I remain upright and my pedals make another revolution.

Yesterday a friend, Beth, posted on FB about a personal challenge she's undertaken. She wants to write a new short story every day. She intends to experiment to see how many she tosses, and how many she keeps for future expansion. It's more like an experiment in worth rather than quality or completeness. She gave herself 1,000 words with which to work, and then invited her friends to do the same. I started thinking about the itch I experience sometimes, the one that makes my fingers want to type or hold a pen to scribble across a page. The one that doesn't care that I don't have an idea; it just wants me to write. I could use an experiment like Beth's. But then I really thought about it and realized that if I have nothing to write, then first lines (which are killers in and of themselves) would not appear. I have a couple concepts I've been meaning to toy with, but they're not enough to begin a story. I need characters and a plot, and they don't seem to accompany the concept.

Then I thought about cheating, which Beth condoned. I have a couple stories that I've toyed with in the past but never fleshed out. Flash fiction attempts, sketches, ideas... And yet, for each one I'd have to be in a particular frame of mind. Predatory and beguiling, scarred and resentful, mysterious and horny. And then some ideas might better fit a larger novel. So, I have a feeling that it will tug at me but, in the end, nothing will come of it because I couldn't let my mind settle on something, couldn't manifest the idea into something greater. And when I set about writing something just for the sake of writing, the endeavor resulted in this post.