Fiery Pen

Starting a new story or a new project is like dating someone new. The process is fresh and unencumbered. It is pure and charged with infatuation. The story may linger in your mind each day like the traces of a new lover from the night before who carved new pathways on your nerves.

You want to live with that story, spent every waking moment staring into its very soul, even though you’ve only just met. Through the sleek, glowing filter of fascination, your story is perfection–no holes, no rough edges. It fills your mind, so it must saturate the page just as easily.

In that fleeting and torrid introduction, things can be simple.

Then reality creeps up behind you, casting a shadow over you, blotting out that rosy aura around your story. The words cool on the page long enough to crystalize into disfigured shapes. The hard edges require polishing. Business and purpose trail on the heels of reality, pushing incessant whispers of all that needs to be done.

Weight packs into your arms as you massage the words, into your head as you work and rework the plot holes. The light around your story flickers and dims, exposing the withered creature as it reduces down to black letters on a glowing page. A fascinating place becomes a jumble of nouns and verbs and too many adjectives.

You read the words over and over until they lose all meaning, until you have run the line of the story in your brain smooth. Then they bind the words and say it has finally taken on a life of its own.

***

After fan fiction therapy in November, I have started an original novel again. Though I have written a short or two, I have not worked on a book since Green Eyes, and querying Green Eyes and releasing Followers took a toll on my inspiration.

Yet that gap has given me more appreciation for this honeymoon stage of creation. Writing is, after all, my favorite part of writing. After losing my way for a depressive bit, I am happy to wallow in this phase for a while.

What am I writing? Well, all I will say is I am back to my horror genre…

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies