First Blush

One of the things I tell my writing students is that writing is a lot like a relationship. I know, some of you are recoiling at the thought, but consider this: why wouldn't writing be like a relationship? Writing is as human as talking and sex, which are both parts of a relationship. Now that I have your attention, let me explain.
New ideas are exciting. Writers have fits of passion, moments to true clarity, where they envision an entire story, experience every emotion of every character, and are swept away. This is what drives us: to communicate that feeling to everyone else, to share something so important that burns inside us we've got no choice but to write it down, and fast. New relationships are the same way. The initial passion is impossible to resist. Two people simply want everything about each other, and they want to tell the world. But as the wiser among us know, the spike of passion that characterizes a new relationship diminishes. It doesn't go away completely, but it falls in temperature, until the happy couple is left with each other, and all those things they never noticed before. Relationships that are built for the long run take something else: commitment. And it's the same in writing. Ideas flood the writer, but what sticks is what's important to both artist and art.
I'm going through that with the novel I'm writing. The first twenty thousand words came pouring out of me; I was in love. But does this story have staying power? I think it does, and that's because I've got some important things to say through this work. But right now I'm in a regrouping mode. I have to go back, organize my notes a little, make sure everything makes sense. This novel and I are committed to each other, so I know we'll make it.