The joy of creation

I just love writing the first draft. Perhaps if I loved it less I would focus more and not need to do so much work on the rewrites. But I get a kick out of making stuff up as I go along. When I started this morning (900 words today), I really had no idea what I was going to write. I thought I would establish a certain journey that my character makes by car over a couple of days. I didn't have a theme or anything -- no certain plot points to hit, no certain characterization I wanted to weave in. I didn't know what she would do on the journey. I just made up a first sentence, wrote that down and kept going. An hour later I had invented all kinds of interesting walk-on characters and background anecdotes. Doubtlessly, almost all of it will get cut eventually, but it was fun. It's fun knowing I'm able to.