Well now HERE'S an experience I haven't had in forever . . .

I won't keep you in suspense.  Here it is.  I HAD FUN WRITING!

OK, maybe I need to walk this back a little bit.  I always have fun writing my blog.  And I often have fun writing my column.  But it has been a long, long time since I've had fun working on a novel.

There are a lot of reasons for this, some of which include the following:

1.  Writing novels is hard.  I know.  Boo-frickity-hoo.  I was raised by frickin'  Belgians.  I know this is a stupid thing to say because writing novels compared to hauling bricks on your back and walking for miles to fetch enough water for the day is a snap.  A self-imposed snap.

But here's the thing.  You have to occupy the World of the Novel you're writing for a long, long, long time.  And it's easy to get discouraged and bored.  Also.  YOU HAVE TO MAKE SENSE.  You have to tie up a lot of loose ends and make sure that the character you called "Riley" before you changed her name to "Grace" somewhere in the middle of your manuscript gets called "Grace" all the way through.  Stuff like that.  There's lots of housekeeping when you write a novel.  Lots and lots of housekeeping.

2.  Writing novels is an act of faith when you don't have a contract, and when you've lost faith in yourself or the project--no matter how temporarily--the writing can start to feel like torture as in "Who do you think you are to write a book.  ANSWER ME.  WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!"

(I apologize fo assaulting you all with so many caps today, btw.)

But yesterday?  I went to MacDonald's and wrote 1000 words in an hour.  Those words were just singing falalalalalalala off the ends of my fingers.

And it was fun.