Expectations and Last Resorts
Why can't writing be as effortless as it used to be?
It's not from lack of trying. I sit here, struggling with each word, as if there is some unspoken necessity that each sentence I write must be perfect. And I know I sound like a broken record, because this ALWAYS happens, and then I ALWAYS come here and complain about it - as if that does any good. It's been like this for the past two years, and I've yet to figure out a way to overcome these obstacles. WHY is that? Why can't I just WRITE like I used to - just doing it for the enjoyment of it? Or writing because I have something I NEED to say? I can't say that I've ever been a writing genius, but at the same time, I know the writing quality I'm capable of, and it is SO much better than what I've been accomplishing.
I suppose this is what they mean when they say you should just write every day. It's obvious advice, really, but it only poses another problem: What in the world can I write about that would help me move forward instead of being trapped in an endless quest of unobtainable perfection? I need to get in the habit of writing and “letting it flow,” but using my book as practice is only driving me insane. That approach obviously isn’t working. I need something else to practice on, and there's only one alternative I can think of.
And that one alternative feels just as daunting as climbing Mt Everest.
Me and this journal haven’t seen eye to eye in years. Part of it is that I’ve grown out of it – this website represents who I was when I was 17, with all my arrogance and self importance and general teenage angst. It’s who I was when I was 19, when I orchestrated my own failure and I first began to realize that life wasn’t going to work out like I planned. It’s who I was in my early 20s, when I holed myself up in my home and played online games all day so I could ignore reality. This journal encompasses my faults, my fears, and my weaknesses, and I’ve done nothing but put it on display for the past 13 years (good GOD I'm getting old). This journal has NEVER been a good thing for me to have, and yet I’ve clung to it. Sometimes desperately, and I've yet to find the courage to let it go. Even now, I couldn’t completely turn my back on this if I tried.
So can I really travel down that road again? What point would there even be to it, when I can’t write about my job (don’t want to be fired) or my boyfriend (don’t want him going apeshit because I dare flung his name out in cyberspace - and believe me, I've been there before with my first college roommate, it's not pretty)? What else is there in my life aside from my cats, food, and TV? It’s not like I have anything else interesting going on in my world, I don’t even really have friends, and writing vague posts on my thoughts and feelings has long since become stale after the past few years. How many more posts like this can I even stomach? How long would I have to endure it before I got my writing confidence back?
And do I even WANT to try and find out?
1 Red Pill To Go
Sometimes I wonder if I made the right choices. I mean, that’s the question everyone asks themselves as they get older, right? What if I had done things differently? Taken that left instead of a right? Swallowed the Red Pill instead of the Blue Pill? What if I really would have liked what was was behind Door Number 1?
No matter what anyone says, they think about the “what if’s.” They mull over the possibilities of what their life could have been like. And anyone who says they don’t do it are, quite frankly, not telling the truth, although I can’t really blame them for it. Socially it's a bit taboo to talk about such things, and the people of your present tend to have a nasty habit of taking personal offense to the mere thought of a past that MIGHT mean they wouldn’t be a part of your life today.
And what do I say to those people? You're right. That's totally why I like to think of where my life went wrong – to specifically factor you out of the equation. That’s why I’m confiding all of this in you, to make you feel bad. Not because you’re one of the few people in my life I trust enough to pour my heart out to, no. Not that because nothing will change no matter what I say, that my past will always be my past, and you’ll still be here and I’m glad that you are. Of course that’s not it. I’m here to insult you and ruin one of the few good things I have going in my life. Thanks for listening.
Now, I haven’t had the pleasure of enduring that conversation with anyone recently, but I have in the past, and it ironically falls into the category of “things I wish I had done differently.” It was definitely one of those “Wait, I take that back, I meant Door Number 1!” moments.
So what does all of this mean? It means I have no one to talk to right now. I’m sitting at my desk at work, struggling not to cry after being the target of insult after insult from someone I care deeply about, after being provided with a laundry list of reasons of why said person “doesn’t want to spend time with me,” and I’m left wondering where I went wrong. I mean, sure, I can openly admit that I’m a little more fucked up than the next person, but this? Feeling this way, again and again? Was it because of the left turn I made? Was Door Number 3 the wrong choice? Did I accidently piss in fate’s Cornflakes? Was I a hideously awful person in my past life? Or, worse yet, in THIS life?
I mean, seriously, not to be completely and totally depressing, but this whole life thing? Sometimes I don’t know why I bother. Judging by my track record, I’m obviously not cut out for this.
1 Red Pill to go, please.
I-told-you-I-could-do-it Cake
Sometimes you've got to take matters into your own hands.
I had great plans for this morning. The weather is finally getting nice, lingering in the mid 80s, and I wanted to take advantage of the morning light by sitting out on the balcony with my laptop. So that I could finally write in peace, with no coworkers selling accounts in the background, no gaming banter through a vent server, or having the TV turned on at full blast right in front of me while I'm obviously trying to read and concentrate. No interruptions. Just me and my thoughts.
Instead, I woke up this morning to find that my lap top trey was already monopolized because a certain someone's work is more important than my projects. He might make more money than me and everything, and it does really suck to work on a Saturday, but I was really looking forward to my morning writing escape. Like, waiting-for-it-all-week kind of looking forward to it.
Sure, I could go out there without a trey, balancing the laptop on my legs, but that would be extremely uncomfortable... and warm. Our apartment is east-facing, and a hot laptop in my lap would only make the Phoenix sun that much more scorching.
So, here's where I take matters into my own hands. I grabbed my laptop, a TV try, and headed to the only other "room" in our small apartment - the bedroom. I'm currently sitting on the bed, indian-style, with the lap top in front of me and the door closed. Er, well, it was closed, until he peeked his head in to see what I was doing and then didn't close it on his way out. Damnit. I think I'll continue to sit here, if nothing than but on principle alone. At least I can't hear the TV in here... that much.
This arrangement isn't so bad, really. At least I can have the overhead fan. Air circulation is one of sweet the joys in life I don't get to have very often.
I have been writing again. It's been more than a year since I started to try to write my book, and after a valiant effort last spring, I eventually took a long hiatus during the summer and winter because I became so frustrated that... well, that I just couldn't write very well. I tried and tried, and probably tried too hard, but no matter what I did I felt like I was only embarrassing myself. I knew I was trying to "wing it", so to speak, having absolutely no writing background (except for this site), or even being that much of an avid reader myself. I knew that I'd be learning along the way, but it became more and more apparent that I wasn't progressing. If anything, I was only perfecting my failure.
I never stopped thinking of my story, though. In the car, during idle minutes at work, while playing one of my silly computer games... the characters were alive in my head, still living their lives during the time that the book was to take place. My home down, present day, but set against my own memories of high school. It was all still there, and I never once stopped thinking of the possibilities of what could happen. I just had lost the motivation to actually write it all out.
Then, about four months ago, I started reading through the books in my minuscule library. I read through the Twilight series again, and all seven of the Harry Potter books. Partly because it was the holidays and it was seriously slow at work, and partly because I just wanted to see how other authors did it. These were books I loved, and I enjoyed reading them even for a second time (and a third time, in certain cases).
It's not like writing a book seemed that hard to do, really - I like writing. I always have. So what is it that keeps stopping me? Why did I have to feel like I had to try so hard to write a book, even though I knew in doing so that I was killing my entire effort? Writing is best when it feels effortless, when it flows, but there I was, thinking I had to strain myself to a sweat in order to get the same results as these other authors. Why? Why couldn't their ease and confidence rub off on me?
I began to read other books - the Vampire Academy series, especially - and these novels were a bit of an eye opener for me. They weren't written in the same "voice" as the other books I had been reading. They were casual and downright snarky, which, when I thought about it, is exactly how I used to write in this journal. Years ago, when I didn't really give a damn about what anyone thought of HOW I wrote but WHAT I had to say, back then, the writing flowed naturally. It certainly wasn't perfect writing by any means, but it wasn't a struggle. I wrote with my voice, not with the voice I thought others wanted me to have.
So, with that new found concept of "writing my way", I started out slow... I began to carry around a notepad with me, jotting down ideas. I managed to flesh out my plot in a way that had been unreachable a year ago, and last week I finally began to type it out in story form. And I tried, I really did, and once again I found I was trying too hard. It's like I would write through a few scenes, maybe half a chapter, and then I just could not continue without rereading what I had just wrote... and I would begin edit, edit, and edit some more, to the point where I was hating everything again and wondering why I bothered. Why did I keep doing this? Why did I seem so dead set on sabotaging myself?
I had only been trying for a week and I was at the end of my rope again, ready to take another 6+ month break to lick the wounds on my confidence, when I forwarded a 3 page sample of my writing to my dear friend Sandy. She was supportive, as always, and it did make me hopeful. She wouldn't lie to me, I knew, but why couldn't I see it the same way she did? What was wrong with my perspective?
I began reading articles on writing, but they weren't really helping. And that's not to say that the information was bad, or that the people were misinformed - that certainly wasn't the problem. It's just that, as with most everything I'm interested in, all the tips and tricks I was reading seemed like common sense to me. I mean, really, there are people who don't know how to develop a character? Or how to write an outline? I mean, sure, I was reading these articles looking for advise, but they weren't telling me anything that I couldn't have figured out for myself. None of them were giving me the answers I needed, and I supposed that's because I didn't know what question I needed to ask.
Then, yesterday morning, I was reading yet another article on how to write a fantasy novel. I happened to like the author of this guide a little more than the others, mostly because I have been using his software (yWriter) for the past year. His advise wasn't any different than the next guy's, really, but it was interesting to see his take on it.
Just when I had had my fill and was about to move on to the next article on my list, I stumbled across this section, half way down the page:
"Keep writing! Don't get too attached to a particular story or to your very first novel. Trust me, however good it is your writing will continue to improve the more you produce. They reckon you have to write a million words of fiction before all the pieces fall into place. How much have you done?"
And I stopped. That was a pretty good question - how much writing have I done? Fiction or not, where did I think the numbers were? I thought of this website, I thought of all the poetry I wrote years ago, the few short stories, and my efforts toward my novel last year... and good god, I've written alot. Millions upon millions of words, all out of the joy of just writing to write. Fiction or not, that has to count or something, right?
And I supposed it did, because with that mindset, I sat down and wrote nearly 3000 words yesterday. And best of all, it's the beginning of the first chapter, the introduction to my story, and writing that has been the bane of my existence for the last year. I had so many ideas in my head, but without a starting point, they seemed lost. Now it feels like it might all click into place.
I allowed myself ONE edit last night, and that's all I'm going to do. From now on, it's on and upwards. I'll finally take some of that common sense advise and write first, edit later. I just need to get this story out of my head before I go insane, and THEN working on editing. I can do this. I've written millions of words before - a 100,000 more should be a piece of delicious I-told-you-I-could-do-it cake.
A year past, a year to come
It's been more than a year since I started to humor the idea of writing a book.
I’ve never been real big on motivation, but the whole idea of becoming an author hit me fast and hard. I remember the first few weeks being frantic, like the ideas were pouring out of me faster than I was able to catch them. Even now, I’ve got about 7 or 8 plots floating around in my head; and while I like every one of them to the point that I can’t decide which direction to go, they are all missing the same thing – and ending. Creating a sufficient enough conflict and having it end in an interesting way seems to be my weak point, and it makes all of the ideas I have feel like wispy strings blowing in the wind. But that hasn’t stopped me from brainstorming about everything else.
I have a very distinct memory of telling my mother the idea for my book – I was pacing frantically back and forth in the kitchen, my arms flailing in the air, and my mother listened silently while she sat in her car. We were both on our lunch hour, and I’m pretty sure I babbled on for the full sixty minutes. It was an amazing rush to finally speak my ideas out loud, and it was only made better by the fact that she LIKED my ideas for the story. Even at the beginning I was already mulling over different options for the story, and it was nice to hear her feedback on what she thought worked the best.
I think it was around March that I convinced myself that I needed to purchase a Mini laptop (the same one I'm typing on now) so that I could have some way to write in "privacy." R is supportive of the idea of me writing a book, but he doesn’t want to know anything about it – not the plot, or the characters, nor how far along I am – and I’m assuming this is because he doesn’t want to risk saying anything that might hurt my feelings. And I get that. R is a blunt perfectionist, much like how I can be at times (and, especially, like how I USED to be – to a sickeningly annoying point), so I appreciate the fact that him keeping his distance his probably his way of avoiding saying things that I may, inevitably, take personally. Do I wish I could share my ideas with him? Would it be nice if he could help me work through the writer’s block I have for conflicts and resolutions? Sure. But, then again, I think I’d rather get through this on my OWN, and let my ideas take flight in the direction that works best for ME. I know I can do this without anyone guiding my way. I want to walk into the jungle of my thoughts alone and come out the other side with something to show for it.
The laptop was a great purchase, though – it’s served its purpose well. I have a few good memories of waking up early on a weekend morning, before R was awake, and going to the guest bedroom to write. I would make myself comfortable on the bed and listen to music (me and Peter Gabriel got REAL close) while I wrote as much as I could convince myself to. There were even a few weeknights that I did the same thing, despite being dead tired from work.
But, like everything, my motivation and inspiration comes in bursts. I’ve had long periods of downtime over the past year, where I would go months without writing a thing. And then, randomly, something would cross my mind and I couldn’t help but write it down. Sometimes what I wrote were ideas I had come up with months ago and was only now finding the correct way to go about it, and other times it was something completely different that didn’t fit with anything I had already laid out. Back stories, flash backs, details of the characters – I’m at the point where I KNOW I would like to devote the first chapter to a back story, something that sets the stage for the rest of the book, and now I’m facing the challenge of picking one from THREE possible options.
If I were to put every word I’ve ever written into a single word document, I’d be impressed if it passed 100 pages – or, hell, maybe even 50 – but after some debate, I’ve decided that’s not the point. I need to stop focusing on how much I write, and focus on WHAT I write. I need to continue writing out everything that comes to mind, as clear as I can make it, and add another string to my collection in the wind. Maybe one day I’ll get lucky and finally write something that ties it all together, but I’ll probably only stumble across that by continuing to WRITE.
After about five months of taking a “break”, I’m finally starting to work on the book again… and the only real drawback is that I don’t like anything I wrote a year ago. Naturally. Of course I wouldn’t like it! That would be EASY! And easy seems to be something that doesn’t exist in my life, but I’ll get through it. I know I’ll do it eventually, and I’ll do it right… but it does sort of suck to be back at the bottom of the same mountain I’ve been clawing at for the past twelve months.
One way or another, I WILL find my way to the other side.
Situational Writers Block
I’ve reached an odd dilemma in my writing.
On the one hand, I keep coming up with ideas for the “middle” part of my book. The more I let my mind wonder the clearer I see each character’s actions, and understand their individual struggles and motivations, during the events that cause all of their lives to transition into conflict. I see all of it, and I am anxious (and a little afraid) to write it.
However… I am also stuck. There is at least one more chapter I need to write, one that is primarily for character building and identifying, before I can even begin to set everything in motion.
I have read countless articles about writing a book, and something they all suggested was to “write the parts you want to write, and then worry about connecting them later.” This seems like an excellent idea to me, almost genius in it’s simplicity, but there’s only one problem: my obsessive need to do everything in order is preventing me from even attempting this. It seems I can’t move forward in the story unless *I* know what happens before, and this is probably because I’m not really working with an outline. I have the general ideas of where I want the story to go, but that’s it – otherwise I let the writing take me where it wants to while I just cling along for the ride. Many of the same guides that suggested I write out of order would also scold me for not working with an outline.
And, damnit, I’m still in conflict over my character’s names. I’m considering changing Ethan to Colin and Emma to either Wendy, Phoebe, Mackenzie… or some others that I can’t quite remember at the moment, because I’m never able to write them down as I think of them.
As many sims as I’ve had over the years while playing Sims 1 and 2, you’d think that something as simple as a name would be an easy task for me. It can’t really be that different, can it?