Words From a Smart Man

I started off the year fully intending to immediately get back to a regular schedule. Regular blog posts, daily writing, being responsible and super awesome, the whole shebang. Unfortunately, however, things didn't exactly go as planned. Despite small bursts of inspiration and desire to write pretty words, I've been crippled by insecurities and even anxiety.

I used to write constantly, and thinking about how much that's changed is something that hurts me a lot. It makes me want to get going again just to prove that I still can, but then I get stopped in my tracks by the overwhelming panic that comes at night when you're surrounded with nothing but darkness and your own insecurities. Over the past few months I've written, but never much at a time. No matter how much I tell myself to put my butt in the chair and produce words, I can't. No matter how much I post about fresh starts, I can't make that fresh start happen. I've lost count of how many times I've deleted this blog's archives to start over, hoping that this time I can make it all work out.

What right do I have to take time away from my real-world responsibilities to play with imaginary friends? Where do I get off playing pretend when there are dishes to do, carpets to vacuum, bills to pay, a husband to feed? What's the point in wasting my time when my stories won't go anywhere; when the chances of making it big are so minuscule?

I might have continued being mired in those bleak thoughts for weeks, months, years longer if it weren't for my husband. We had a long talk late at night, when I was firmly in the grasp of the strongest insecurities, and he said something that was akin to the slap in the face that brings a person in hysterics back to the present.

"If there's something you enjoy, you owe it to yourself to do that thing."

Gods bless that man and his ability to help me break through my insecurities. It's a simple statement, but it gets down to the base of my problem. I don't need reassurances that I'm a great writer, because I know damn well some of my words are shoddy. I don't need insistence that I'll get published someday, because that's not my primary goal. I don't need somebody to tell me my stories are good, because I don't write for them and their enjoyment, if it exists, is a happy accident.

What I needed, and what I think everyone needs from time to time, is reassurance that it's okay to have fun and spend time doing things you enjoy. You can't blow off your responsibilities, but you can't kill yourself stressing over everything and forget to actually enjoy things every once in a while. It may seem like such an obvious thing, but sometimes it's so hard to let myself get immersed in a time-consuming hobby that doesn't have an obvious payout. My crafts I can sell or give as gifts; there's practical sides to that. Video games can be interrupted with little notice. All of my other hobbies have some practical aspect or can be set to the side easily when responsibilities rear their ugly heads.

Writing, though...writing is time-consuming, writing doesn't have immediate payouts (if ever), and writing is hard to break away from when you're in the middle of a scene. It's something that's deeply personal and a bit indulgent, and for so long now I've been wrapped up in analyzing every little thing I do that any hobbies that are more than superficial have fallen to the absolute bottom of my to-do lists and have all but dropped of the radar completely.

January may be half-over, but it's not too late to set New Year's goals and resolutions. Hell, it's never too late to set goals and resolutions. Every day is a new one, and today I intend to roll up my sleeves, kick out the last remnants of the insecurities that have kept me from playing with words, and actually write. 

I enjoy writing, and I owe it to myself to spend some time telling stories, free of stress and free of questions about the practicality of scribbling rough drafts in a tattered notebook. It's my time to shine.

Until next time,
J.

A Fresh Start is a Beautiful Thing

For many years now, since I was a kid, I've fancied myself a writer and I've wanted to publish my work. In third grade, when told to write down my goals on a sheet of paper, I wrote that "I want to write a ten book series about wizards." I've been making up stories since I was very young, and it was in middle school that I first started to write with the intent to publish my work.

My first attempts at novels were, as with most folks, pretty bad. I remember the first "book" I ever tried to write. I actually still have the notebook, though the story itself has long since been ripped out. There was a group of girls, an epic quest, faeries, true love, all that jazz. To be perfectly honest, I'm pretty sure it was alarmingly close to being a ripoff of one of my favorite books at the time, The Prophecy of the Stones by Flavia Bujor.

But, hey, I got better.

I remember bits and pieces from some of my old attempts at penning epic tales. There were usually faeries or elves, the main character was always in some way a reflection of me (because, again, middle school), and thinking back I'm pretty sure a lot of it was quite dark. People died, killed, held forbidden thoughts and desires, and ran rampant in worlds full of evil kings and frightening monsters. 

Things changed a bit when my family went through a difficult move. I didn't have any friends, really, and I was going through a severe culture shock for having moved to a drastically different environment. Not a lot of folks shared my interests or values, and I was bullied rather terribly, to the point where I begged my mother to take me out of school and teach me herself. Through it all, I kept writing. I carried around huge binders stuffed with stories, drawings, maps, and ideas. It's what got me through a lot of shit, and while I don't have any surviving scraps of writing from this time I remember that my stories got quite bleak and quite a bit darker. I hit my "vampire phase," eating up every scrap of vampire fiction I could get my hands on (this was before Twilight, though I eventually read that, too). My writing was full of vampires who slaughtered the people who tormented them, and who did whatever the hell they wanted without having to be afraid that people would hurt them.

In my first year of high school, I produced a monstrosity titled The Family Secret, about an ancient pact between vampire nobility and a human bloodline. I was convinced it was amazing, and very nearly got pulled into a pay-to-publish scam. My mom was a bit wiser than I was, thankfully, and The Family Secret fortunately never entered into the world. I maintain a great fondness for those characters, though, and they crop up in my short stories from time to time.

The next year was my first year participating in NaNoWriMo. I still have all of my notes, diagrams, artwork, and word count charts from that mayhem, and that novel, The Surface of the Deep, earned its fair share of rejection letters (including one that flat-out told me to learn to write better queries--I think I still have it somewhere). I jumped into the publishing world feet-first, and got a little muddy. I learned, though, and kept going.

The next two years saw some more projects off-and-on, including the novel I am currently re-writing: The Pixiehunter. Of all the things I've written in my life, it's my favorite and it's the one I think has the most potential. Folks tell me it's a good premise, and I think if I work hard I can make it shine.

2011, though...2011 was a hard year. I gradually stopped writing new things, only obsessively editing old ones. Eventually I stopped doing that much, save a few words every now and then. I met my now-husband that year, which was amazing, and I lost my grandmother, which was not so amazing. That year had a lot of ups and downs, and in 2012 I started struggling with depression. I'd stopped writing completely at that point, no matter how much my friends and family encouraged me, and it was pretty much the rock-bottom low of my writing life so far.

Now, though. Now it's the end of 2013. Things are stable in my personal life, and I'm ready. I've struggled and worked hard over the past year, and I've come out a little battered, but also a little wiser. Things are good, and I can feel the ideas flowing. My muse has returned, and it's time for me to shine.

I hope everyone's had a good start to the week. Until next time,

J.