writing is an extreme sport

Check out this great post by BlogLily on what happens when you're writing and you get to the edge of the known. It's the best description I've read of what happens when you've started, and maybe you had to scourge yourself to sit down at your desk and you didn't want to start and you put it off by checking your email obsessively or playing computer games or re-ordering your post-it collection, but you're at your desk and kind of grumpily writing this and that, moving through the scene that you set yourself to write for the day and all of a sudden you're in new territory. All of a sudden you realize that Carl has gone on this walk so he can go and look at the family cemetery that's back up in the hills behind the farm, and that this connects with about 8 other things you've got going in the novel and therefore is inspired, except that you bypassed inspiration and the scene is coming straight out of your fingertips. You're writing something you hadn't thought of, but it's pretty OK, and the grumpiness is gone and you let the post-its slide to the floor because you're writing yourself into a new place. This is the greatest writer feeling in the world.