From you - from all of you.
I hit up my local Barnes & Noble and wrote. Despite not "feeling like it," despite feeling poorly today, and despite the output from my pen stinking up the place like week-old carrion.
I have been treating my writing like a hobby lately. I've had a lot of things on my plate (who hasn't?) and allowed Novel #2 to limp along on its own steam. I've added a paragraph or two here and there. I've done some typing when the spirit moves me, but the cussedness and enthusiasm that got me through the first book and through 3/4s of this one is long gone.
Instead I've been paying fantastic lip service to my 'writing' and not doing any of the work involved. Oh, I've been reading the blogs from reviewers and editors and agents and other authors, but learning about the business doesn't equal being in the business. And not a single bit of all the things I've learned is going to help me if I don't finish the book.
So today, I sat down and got to work. And the writing wasn't good. It wasn't good at all. But I did it anyway, because every professional writer out there says sometimes you just gotta work through the crap, you have to give yourself permission to let the words flow regardless of how awful those words are.
Now, in revision, these words may get cut, or I may find a germ of an idea in them that begs to be explored, or it could just be the invisible emotional glue needed to bind one tense scene to another and I'll get to leave it alone, crap and all. But the point is, I put the words on the page. Finally.
I'm declaring a moratorium on emotional turmoil (as if I have control over these things), it just detracts from my goals. From now on, it's boring, hum-drum, everyday, work-a-day, finish the effing book for me. I'm also working on moving.
I'm a Cancer. I like my safe, comfortable hermit-like world. As a result I have been in my apartment for over nine years and have packed it full of things that make me feel like my life is full. And now I have to dismantle it all and pack up my life to shift it 100 miles north. I like being lazy better, but, turns out, lazy doesn't get the job done. Kind of like writing.
Just finished: Legend
Just finished: Dad in Disguise
Currently reading: No Rest For The Wicked
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2 comments:
On a completely unrelated note, my daughter is a Cancer, your "hermit like world" helped me understand her just a little more today. Thank you.
I can happily spend a week inside my house alone and not even notice that I haven't seen humans. I'm that content with my own company. It allows a lot of the world to pass me by though, and that's not so great.
I have to be dragged kicking and screaming into social situations, but it's usually not too bad once I'm in the real world.
I don't know if that's my Cancer-side or just my natural anti-social tendencies. Good luck with your daughter though :-)
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