The first thing that comes to mind is backstory. Pick a character from one of your worlds and tell us about her or his home life, his school days, her apprenticeship in the hat shop, his days in the stable, her days in the garden. How she hates the aunt who runs the house where they're both servants, how he loves to play hooky from work and go fishing. Whatever. Just get into that world through the eyes of that character, understanding that nobody's ever likely to read any of this, it's just for you, and for the character. Or pick an outside POV character and describe your character from that viewpoint. Any bit of non-essential narrative, description, vernacular, that will help you slip into that world would be good.

Oh, that's a great idea! Thank you!

Also good to start with the one with clear parameters, simply because structure, etc., can be reassuring. And I know how you feel wrt being out of practice. It really is true that the only thing that fixes that is words on paper.

Also also -- you can't be afraid to fail. Believe that there is no failure, there's only the way you're going to tell this particular story at this particular time.

Also also also -- revising really is the most important, essential part of writing. The raw stuff is just building blocks. You make them into a structure, and you might have to sand down some corners, or remove a few blocks entirely, or paint a bunch of them different colors, but they're where you begin.

Disclaimer. That was probably for me as much as for you, because I'm starting to write again, or I want to start again, and I am terrified to do it. So here's to taking my own advice?

Oh! Last alsos, I love Bev's idea, and I also super love that you'd like to write again!

Thanks very much, Amy! That is a good bunch of alsos.

What everyone is saying, on repeat. Go B.org writers Go!

Dang, I need to get back to writing too. In my copious spare time. Sigh

I'm trying to get back to writing as well. I have two complete drafts waiting to be edited and another book outlined and 12,000 words written, but there have been so many things getting in the way. Motivation isn't a problem, but time sure is.

-t, my suggestion is to work on whichever project is the one you feel the most and/or think about the most.

While I'm not writing origfic as that's not where my passions lie, I do write a lot with minimal time. I've got a set minimum of 100 words a day. Even if you only were able to write that amount (and I have 100 word days and I have 1000 word days and everything between and sometimes above), that's a novella a year. Last night's 100 words were jammed into the 17 minutes I had before going and checking in on the kid. (There was a timer involved.)

Scrivener is the bomb for keeping me going and organizing things. I think it's upped my productivity by a million at this point.

PM, seriously? That's a game changer

Part of me wants to try Scrivener and part of me worries I would just wind up playing with the bells and whistles and not actually writing.