"You've Changed, Miss Morgan."

This is going to sound hokey and cheesy and completely out of character for me, but I feel like my fellow writers might relate.

Last night, I dreamed of a muse.

Not just any muse.  A character from a very popular film series that used to be a huge part of my life.  A character I've written in old fanfictions and played on old RP boards.

He was in my dream, came to me as if we hadn't seen each other in years.  He called me Genesis, the name of one of my characters who has been hibernating in my imagination for years, a character that has always been an extension of myself as well as a role model for who I wish I was.

There was an adventure to be had.  We were in an old building, perhaps an old train station or museum, huge, filled with statues.  Something was coming.  Something epic and frightening.  He was ready for the battle.  I hesitated.  I tried to logic my way out of it, avoid the adventure.

He looked at me, as if seeing me for the first time, and not liking what he saw.

"You've changed, Miss Morgan," he said.

It hit me.  Both me in my dream and me now in consciousness.  

You've changed, Miss Morgan.

I have changed.  I've become cynical and safe.  I've avoided the adventure.  I've put aside my passions and my escape and my happy place.  That tattoo on my wrist, of the wolf howling at the moon?  That's Genesis.  Genesis is strong and fearless and passionate and everything I want to be.

I want to be her again.

As I sit down to write, beginning perhaps too late my novel for NaNo, I'll look at my tattoo and remember how brave Genesis is, and how brave I can be, too.

In a recent Court of Nerds​ interview, comic writer Sam Humphries said something that really resonated with me as a writer: "If I don't write these stories, no one will."

My future isn't the only one being held back.  My stories are, too, and everyone in them.  Genesis, HellKat, Lucia, all of these wonderful, complex characters with dreams and loves and stories to tell will die with me if I don't do them justice and send them out to the world.

In my dream, when he told me I changed, I looked at his face, one my Genesis was so familiar with, and took his hand.  He grinned, and we ran off to adventure.

Don't worry, Captain.  I haven't changed so much.