Answer: By Lots, or Not Much at All

Trying to sit down and write in a noisy cafe. It's difficult, despite how hard Akisa is poking me in the back of the head since this morning. This was the second Akisa-related dream I had in the last week. At first, it was a wondering dream in which I was late for something. Eventually, however, I found a group of adults and children that found the story personally significant. It wasn't that I had written a good story, it was that many found Akisa has important to themselves as she is to me. I woke to her asking, over and over again, "Why haven't you told my story? When will you tell my story?" I'm thirty now, and I've had this story idea for the better part of a decade. If I'm not going to tell it now, then what in the hell am I waiting for? I keep asking myself if I would have such trouble if this were a job. I very much doubt I would. I would instead sit down and work through the text much as I do when I'm writing courseware. Some days it would come out great, and I wouldn't have difficulties going from one scene to the next. Other days, it'd feel like I was doing little other than spewing crap. The part that always daunts me is starting. With course writing, I always have the concepts and the facts of the thing I am writing on which to start. I diagram it out, I expand the concepts, consider how to introduce and explain them to an audience who is unfamiliar with it. Thinking about story writing, on the other hand, my first inclination is to say "No! You can't do that!" But really, how is it all that different?