Being a writer (or possibly being an adult in general) is a lot like being a shark. You really can't take a moment to rest on your laurels and enjoy your work. "I totally bit the crap out of that seal, it never saw it coming. I think I'll just sit here and awkwardly rub my stomach...area with my fins for a little while." "Wow, I can't believe I finished that story -- and on time, too! I think I'll celebrate by playing Bejeweled for the next two weeks." It kind of amounts to the same thing. In order to be truly effective -- in order to truly live the writer's life -- you can allow yourself a moment of satisfaction, of self-reflection, but then you have to move on to the next.
I went through a really great six-week period of productivity, where I was able to write pretty much every day, finished off three or four different short stories (that are currently 'in a drawer,' marinating before an editing pass), and produced fairly grandiose plans for how my work would go from here on out. I had gotten over the hump, once and for all, I thought. Now that I had discovered and removed whatever had been blocking me from writing I could move on to all those things I had wanted to do but never had the discipline or energy for.
Then December hit and I was write back to square one.
To be fair to myself, there were a lot of mitigating circumstances. We had an unexpected visitor from out of town for a couple of weeks. My full-time job went a little nuts, so most of my willpower and energy was going towards that. The holidays are coming up, and this month is pretty much a blank check to drop any and all discipline that you've built up through the year. The holidays are pretty much an anti-Lent, a non-stop gauntlet of celebrations that you make it through. All of that partying catches up to you on the other side of New Year's, when you're staring down a pretty long stretch of holidaylessness and a laundry list of resolutions you've made and are grimly determined to keep.
I'm going to try to head that off right now. Last year I thought I had the resolution thing cracked -- basically lay out pods of three over-arching goals that could be achieved in six weeks. Then take one week to double back, look over what I had done, see if I could make the habit stick a little better or more easily. Then set three new goals and repeat. That lasted about as long as the other resolutions did. By February or March, all sense of structure to my goal-setting goes out of the window.
This is all a fairly roundabout way of saying that I'm still not very shark-like when it comes to writing. I'll have a strong burst of will and creativity over a fairly contained period and when I've finished with that I'll sit back and praise myself for my progress. By itself there's nothing wrong with the impulse to be satisfied with your work, but if your satisfaction leads you to think that you're 'done', well...that's a problem.
Creative people are never 'finished'. We take breaks, vacations and hiatuses from our work, but we're never done. Even as I write this there are more ideas beating down the barricades of my brain, half-finished short stories are begging to be completed and the few bits that are finished are asking me to make them better, to show them to the world. There's still so much left to do.
Sharks need to keep moving in order to live. If they stop, they suffocate. Stillness is death. Motion is life. For them, it's that simple. For me, it certainly can be. I've stopped to admire what I've done for the past two months long enough. There's very little to show for it, and so much more that needs to be shaped before it's ready for everyone. It's time to get moving. Hopefully for longer, this time.
I went through a really great six-week period of productivity, where I was able to write pretty much every day, finished off three or four different short stories (that are currently 'in a drawer,' marinating before an editing pass), and produced fairly grandiose plans for how my work would go from here on out. I had gotten over the hump, once and for all, I thought. Now that I had discovered and removed whatever had been blocking me from writing I could move on to all those things I had wanted to do but never had the discipline or energy for.
Then December hit and I was write back to square one.
To be fair to myself, there were a lot of mitigating circumstances. We had an unexpected visitor from out of town for a couple of weeks. My full-time job went a little nuts, so most of my willpower and energy was going towards that. The holidays are coming up, and this month is pretty much a blank check to drop any and all discipline that you've built up through the year. The holidays are pretty much an anti-Lent, a non-stop gauntlet of celebrations that you make it through. All of that partying catches up to you on the other side of New Year's, when you're staring down a pretty long stretch of holidaylessness and a laundry list of resolutions you've made and are grimly determined to keep.
I'm going to try to head that off right now. Last year I thought I had the resolution thing cracked -- basically lay out pods of three over-arching goals that could be achieved in six weeks. Then take one week to double back, look over what I had done, see if I could make the habit stick a little better or more easily. Then set three new goals and repeat. That lasted about as long as the other resolutions did. By February or March, all sense of structure to my goal-setting goes out of the window.
This is all a fairly roundabout way of saying that I'm still not very shark-like when it comes to writing. I'll have a strong burst of will and creativity over a fairly contained period and when I've finished with that I'll sit back and praise myself for my progress. By itself there's nothing wrong with the impulse to be satisfied with your work, but if your satisfaction leads you to think that you're 'done', well...that's a problem.
Creative people are never 'finished'. We take breaks, vacations and hiatuses from our work, but we're never done. Even as I write this there are more ideas beating down the barricades of my brain, half-finished short stories are begging to be completed and the few bits that are finished are asking me to make them better, to show them to the world. There's still so much left to do.
Sharks need to keep moving in order to live. If they stop, they suffocate. Stillness is death. Motion is life. For them, it's that simple. For me, it certainly can be. I've stopped to admire what I've done for the past two months long enough. There's very little to show for it, and so much more that needs to be shaped before it's ready for everyone. It's time to get moving. Hopefully for longer, this time.
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