My most recent turnaround has been completed, and I’ve swung myself back to completely the other direction.
This time a week ago, I was more than a full day behind in my work, I hadn’t written in a week, and yada yada yada.
Today, I’m ahead of schedule with editing work, I finished my outline tonight of the first draft of my pilot, and I’m ready to start work on my novel tomorrow…on time.
That’s a bit daunting, to be real with y’all. I don’t feel all finished and prepared. Quite the opposite. But, something that I’ve realized fairly recently in life is that you actually can’t wait for things to all calm down and be all wrapped up in a neat bow, because that shit never happens. There will always be distractions. Always. You just have to dive in, make time, and go for it. So, I’m going to.
Tomorrow starts my newest challenge: 3 pages a day, manuscript format which is double-spaced, for now until marriage-time in September, which is…approximately 60 days, give or take a day. Then, I’ll take a couple weeks off to do and enjoy all that, then it’s a sprint to finish the thing before the end of the year.
I really hope that I’ll feel proud when I reach the end of the year having finished a pilot and a novel. I think I will. I do enjoy finishing things, that’s for sure. And starting them. It’s the middle part, of course, that’s the hardest. But, this blog has very much helped that by really making EVERYTHING the middle. It’s all the same. It’s all one long walk, not a sprint up and down a mountain.
That’s still taking some getting used to, for sure. But, I’ve really conquered that with my editing work, and the writing really IS coming along. I’ve done so much more with this steady, relentless, never-stopping approach than I have since I was a kid and I had nothing else to do.
I had a conversation the other night about what it was like when we were kids, writing, oblivious to responsibility, just creating whatever we loved. Looking back on that work now, I can see that it’s crap. Not the ideas, but the execution. This friend with which I was having the conversation, firmly believed that we as creative people had it right back then, that we should try as hard as we can to return to that place. I agreed with them in terms of doing what we truly love doing, but not with the sentiment overall.
There is a reason why I look back on that work now and can see all the flaws. I wasn’t good at writing yet, because I didn’t have experience. I still don’t have enough experience. In fact, I firmly believe it is only much, much more experience that will get me to where I want to go with my creative abilities.
So, no. I have absolutely no desire to return to the days of me as a teenager, writing my Star Trek novel in my bedroom. Do I wish it were as easy for me to crank out pages and pages of material like I did in those days? Sure. But to focus solely on those aspects of where I’ve come from is grossly missing the point: I’ve learned since then. Good things and bad things. But to go back to that place would be to lose what I have learned. I’m better NOW than I was THEN from all the experiences that I’ve had, and to move forward, I must continue to collect experiences and learn from them.
I really, really believe that creating stories is something around 10% inspiration and 90% very hard work.
Really.
In fact, I believe that’s true of everything in life. It’s a grind. You have to work really, really hard to get what you want. And the payoff has always been worth it for those things that are worth keeping in my life.
Anyway…I grinded through a very long weekend, and tomorrow will definitely be another grinder of a day, but I’m happy to do the work, and I’m even happier to be right on track where I want to be.
Oh, and I should mention that an old friend of mine from up in Humboldt it jumping in with me on the novel writing challenge – he has one that he’s been wanting to work on for a while now, and he’s in to write every day. A page a day, minimum. So, that’s cool. Having a partner in crime when taking on something difficult is a proven strategy for success. My working out with Matt is a perfect example. We’re both working way harder than we would without each other.
So yeah! I’ll see you bitches tomorrow!