Original creation - writing is the answer

I'm generally a hopeful person, but recently I've had a couple of down days when I wondered why I bother to write.  A combination of rainy, gloomy, winter weather, and brooding about another writer's  success, temporarily brought me low.

So what's the cure for these down days?  The only answer I know that works is to write.  And sometimes that means forgetting all about the idea of writing for publication.  It means writing what wants to present itself to me.

Recently I read an SF novel that started with a long drawn-out description of the dawn.  And while it was full of relevant symbolism, it was over-written, too full of detail, and the pace of the story too slow.

But it reminded me that I love sunrises, so I took out notepad and pen and began writing a series of sketches of characters watching the dawn.  The aim was to experiment with different voices and preceptions.  To create an immediate response to a sunrise which had no planned ending.  

The pieces may just end up being filed on my computer under the working titles of Sunset Piece 1, 2, etc.  And perhaps that's where they'll stay.  But some of them may lead to stories, or suggest characters, problems and challenges that are worth pursuing.  

That wasn't really the point of the exercise.  The point was to break free of writing 'correctly'.  Giving myself the freedom to write whatever came took me back to the thrill of original creation.  It allowed me to sit back and watch a page of writing appear that brought a new world into being.  A vista, or a character, who didn't exist half an hour before.

That's why I keep writing when others reject me,  I'm a magician, a creator of myriad wonders in unique combination.  My characters' names, their problems, their voices, are like no-one elses's.  They are mine, plucked from the ether, from the void.  

And there's nothing like a morning's original creation to raise my spirits, make me smile, and for me to believe that all is well.