Kristin Butcher... has novel ideas

There is no better feeling than the overwhelming need to spill a story onto paper or -- these days -- a computer screen. The urge cannot be contained, not that you would want to contain it, but if you did, you couldn't. (If you understood that sentence, you have been reading my blog too often.) The product of this literary frenzy may not be the best writing you've ever done; in fact, it may be quite awful, but that isn't really important. The piece can be fixed with rewriting. What matters is that it was inspired. It practically wrote itself, without any effort on your part. Your writing cup runneth over, as it were.

Before I became a published writer, I only ever worked on a story when I was inspired, so writing was always a huge high.

Not so anymore. Oh, I still have bouts of inspiration from time to time, but they usually arrive when I have to squelch them, because I'm working on something else that has a deadline attached. So, my writing these days is generally more goal oriented. It's still creative, and I still love doing it -- and I'm a lot better at it than I used to be, but now it is my craft and not my holiday.