Every time I write about writing, I spend a ridiculous amount of time reading and rereading the post looking for reasons not to post it. I start and stop and tab out to another website, or another program entirely, and wait another day or two before reading the post again. It’s a very choppy, ADHD-esque process.
I do a lot of the same starting and stopping and tabbing out to other screens when I’m writing too, but the major difference being I’m not usually agonizing over every last word I write. The fiction flows so much more freely than the non. I can write consistently for extended periods of time without worrying about how ridiculous it sounds or how grammatically incorrect it is. And usually when I go back and read through what I wrote, I think one of two things:
Ehh—it’s not bad. I might actually kinda like that.
or
Ehh—could be worse, I’ll edit it later.
When going back to read through a blog post—any blog post really, but especially the posts about writing—I really only think one thing:
Crap, crap, typo, crap, typo, crap.
Once I reach the FUCKIT stage—as I always eventually do—I either click “publish” and I’m done, or I save the draft and let it stew for months until I eventually delete the whole thing.
Somewhere in my warped, overloaded mind, there is a piece of me that gets hung up on the idea that somebody is going to read this shit. (Other than the three people that do occasionally read this shit.) And when that [other] somebody comes along, they’re going to think, “She calls herself a writer? Oh ye gods.”
The odds of that happening are pretty slim. And when it comes down to it, in the grand scheme of things, I really don’t care who thinks I’m a train wreck. I don’t write with the intention of sharing it with the world. (Yes, I have this blog. No, I DGAF if anybody actually reads it.) I have no intention of ever publishing anything in my fiction arsenal—past, present, or future. I write for me. I write because I want to. I write because I need to. And if nobody else likes it, that’s really not my problem.
But the long-bullied social-phobe in me always has that nagging vermin in the back of my mind thinking: Somebody somewhere is judging me.
To which I tell myself: If they don’t have anything better to do than sit around and judge ME? Wow. It really must suck to be them.
And true to form, when I started writing this post, I had a whole other plan in mind. I ended up writing that when I fully intended to write this.
Par for the course.
I went through months (a year or more?) without making any significant writing progress. I’d get little spurts of inspiration here and there, but nothing that lasted more than a few days, sometimes I’d get a week or two. None of it really resulted in anything worth reading.
Then I hit my major breakthrough on the Reunion From Hell story and I WROTE pages and pages…and pages on that thing in a very short amount of time. Then the Freelancer FTP plan broke my Reunion streak. I flip-flopped between the two for quite some time. Then Grammer Check* cropped up, right along with the Unconventional Roommates. Those two got a considerable amount of attention for a long time until Executive Decision and Grey Matter** came along. Most recently I’m stabbing at Desmond, Missing in Action, and Saints and Sinners.
I went from devastating drought—writer’s block from the seventh level of hell would probably be more accurate—to more ideas than I know what to do with. It’s a blessing and a curse to have the unpredictable attention span that I do. I either hyper-focus and fixate completely on one project to the point of banging my head against the wall because I’m completely stuck. Or I hop from project to project to project…to project…to project writing what comes to mind, but not finishing anything because I can’t focus on any one thing long enough to do so.
ADHD for the motherfucking win right here, kids.
BUT!
I’m writing, and that is really all I care about.
Yes it’s frustrating as all hell that I can’t seem to finish a damn thing, but writing is writing and is as pivotal to my survival as music…and breathing, I suppose. And Bob. Even if that makes me sound terribly codependent. Go ahead and judge me on that.
And then I look back and realize I’m speaking in unintelligible code nobody but me will understand and five years from now I will look back on all these project code names and think…WTF were any of these stories even about?
I really need to start giving these projects actual titles. Or at the very least code names that are somehow relevant to the actual story.
Bad naming mechanics aside, I’ve written thousands of words on every single one of these projects in the last year. (Some in the last few weeks.)
I’m pretty sure I’ve done more writing in the past year than I have in the past five-plus combined.
I did a rough calculation combining all that I’ve written on this pile of projects and came up with somewhere around 500,000 words. MS Word’s word-count function is probably not even close to accurate but DUDE.
* The code name was supposed to be Grammar Check but I can’t seem to spell grammar properly anymore so I just gave up correcting myself in terms of this project. I think we all know who to blame for that one.***
** I can never seem to stick with one spelling gray vs grey. I’m the same way with blond vs blonde.
*** ANDY.
And with that, we have reached the FUCKIT stage.
Publish.
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Breathe Ryan Star |