Fear the Blank Page!
While working on my latest work in progress, I noticed something early on that I'm only really getting around to facing. My project is going through the four years my characters from another work had spent together, and the events that transpired to get them to where they were in the start of the other story. Straight forward, simple, and I actually have a solid background for things I already know happened. They did, after all, speak liberally of their past together, which gave me plenty of antidotes to develop upon, and also some of the main events that shaped their relationship. That being said, I had a timeline in which these events occurred, and as I was laying them out, a glaringly obvious thing popped out at me: They say absolutely nothing of what happened in year three. 
Zip. Zero. Zilch.
It's the only year that nothing is spoken of, and this brings me great fear. Why? Because this is where I could really, really screw this up. My problem from the start of this project was how I loved these characters so much that I wanted to re-write their ending. Which, of course, would be bad. But now I'm facing something that could be just as harmful: the chance that I may accidently re-write their past.
A blank slate, a year that they never recall an event from. What horrible, unspeakable things could have happened? What beautiful, magical things could have happened between them that they don't dare to recall? I have some ideas, but I've already had many more I had to squash because they affected continuity (and I mourned those ideas like you wouldn't believe).
It's scary business, this whole creativity thing. Especially when you're working with a story or characters you're already intimately involved with. It's like going off the beaten path to see what wonders might be beyond the line of trees you're so familiar with. Maybe it's a beautiful brook where the birds chirp louder and the sun gleams brighter. Or, maybe it's a grizzly bear's hunting territory where no animal survives once it enters the dark, shadow grove. The only real way to find out is taking a deep breath, walk around the trees, and hope you have a steak you can throw at the scary beast before turning back and running for the path, hoping that the next adventure of discovery proves less of a hazard to your health.
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