Standing on the Edge of an Abyss

How do you feel when starting a new WIP?

 I always feel as if I'm standing on the edge of the abyss and am about to take off on a new adventure. I'mm admit to becoming rather obsessed with the idea, the characters and the plot of the new work I'm about to begin. The characters follow me into my dreams and I begin to spin a bedtime story featuring these characters. I always wish I could remember those dreams since I feel they would make putting the words on paper a breeze.

I have just begun a new work. For weeks I spun stories about the characters in my head, bits on pieces of papers. I even wrote out the opening scene. Only it turned out this wasn't the real opening scene. I was creating a new world. This was a fantasy and would be a trilogy. I don't like prologues but this story called for one. My plan was to write one that gave the background of this world. This prologue doesn't. The prologue starts with a young man facing his father's death and promises he makes to him. Death bed promises. Now this is an abyss. And I leaped.

Where did I land. Not in the first scene I had sketched out to begin the book. Somehow the fingers began to write a scene that seemed to come from nowhere but my pen flew across the page. The scene I had envisioned as the first one became the second one in the book.

Sometimes when you're standing on the edge of the abyss, you just have to push off and fly into the depths. The discoveries can astonish you. In another story just completed, a scene written contained a short interlude that made no sense to me when I wrote the words but something told me to keep this scene in the story. As I neared the ending the reason for those perhaps fifty words became clear. I was very glad I flew into that abyss and those words appeared.

How about you? How do you feel when starting a new story? Are you scared? I know I am until I take the plunge and soar into the abyss.