because it's how you find your way to your muse, and how you allow it to make its way to you. The freedom from considerations of money is absolute, and in that way it's freedom, too, from considerations of success. The only consideration is the words on the page, the characters you love, and the characters they love. I could just sob, with the immensity of my gratefulness. Can you imagine (but we don't have to, anymore) there being no arena between, say, your shower and Broadway? Your padlocked diary and your book on shelves at Barnes & Noble? As it is, though, you can sing your heart out, write your heart out, love your heart out, in online communities, posting to the wonder that is AO3, finding readers who love the characters you love, and love watching them love the characters we all love.
The other side of my passion is a kind of terror - at the what ifs. What if I'd never spent fifty passionate hours of my life watching The Untamed? What if I hadn't, for reasons whether related or orthogonal, I really don't know which, now, browsed creative writing classes six months after that, and made the decision to click a button labeled "Enroll"? What if the series and the course hadn't converged in a writing prompt I looked at, one night, that then inspired me to this line?:
“I’ll drive him home,” Wen Xu said. He looked at Jiang Cheng, eyes inscrutable. “Let’s go.”
And what if, of course, I hadn't had the luxury of luxury? The luxury of time, and health, and home, and a trusty laptop?
It doesn't bear imagining, the counterfactual.
Neither does it need imagining, the counterfactual.
Because the truth is what it is: it's 70,000 words of fiction I'm fucking proud of and proud to be proud of, youall. So proud.
The truth is what it is: I feel like I've found my calling - very late but very true. And I'm going to pursue it, this calling - watch me - God willing - until 70K becomes double that, and double that again. Until the trusty laptop conks out, until health fails, till time runs out.
Watch me.