Choosing, Every Time

Writing, in my opinion, recently reminded me of a particular quote I once heard, in respect to love.

"You have to find someone who is your best friend first, so that even once the passion is gone, you still have that.”

And I was thinking, I’m the kind of author who gets a lot of ideas and wants to follow them, because they’re new, and exciting. But I also have to decide, when do I keep a current focus so I don’t drift away into several directions, and how do I stick to it?

This month, I’m focusing on a Heaven/Hell Fantasy that excites me, and that I truly do love, but at the same time, I’ve got projects open where I adore the characters there too, and I keep wanting to dive into that and dive into their scenes or their immense worldbuilding instead;

And what I started thinking was this: the Heaven/Hell Fantasy that I am working on, and the Epic Fantasy that I also want to give my attention to, both represent different kinds of love.

One feels like having a best friend that you love with steadiness and calmness, and the other is fuelled with the passion of just starting out.

If I take my time writing a book — which is not a fast process — then eventually the early excitement will go, and it will become more of a steady pulse rather than spikes of excitement, and that’s a different kind of love.

Imagine one day I get an idea to write a book, and then sometime through, lose all of my passion for it. Then what? I don’t want to write it, there’s no passion, what’s left? That's when I could remind myself that, I won't feel excited all the time, and maybe I’m losing the joy because it’s trying to remind me to go back to the heart of the story, and why I was so passionate in the first place, or maybe it's because the novelty wore off and now it's about making things work.

But I think maybe I just need to remember why I was so passionate in the first place, and then find the best friend in that. Find the steady kind of love that I have to keep choosing, consciously, every time.