Working Through
Working on TTOB is going Epically Slow. I thought maybe it was that I was tired of my characters, that my wrists hurt, that my mind was too full of critique, something. Anything. Some reason I could point to and say "that's why I'm not getting anything done."
I really did think it had to do with me being temporarily sick of working with this particular set of characters, until yesterday. I opened up an extremely old backstory file and decided as an exercise to update it. I wrote 4 handwritten pages.
Obviously I'm not sick of these characters.
I keep pinning images of them or their clothes or furniture. I'm not tired of this story-- and if I get to do with it what I want to, I have two other manuscripts to write them through. So why have I been slacking?
Source: sunshineandpearls.tumblr.com via Kathleen on Pinterest
Finally I had to admit that though my wrists are part of it, though fatigue (mental and physical) is part of it, though I'm totally rewriting a story (which takes quite a bit of mental acrobatics), there's one problem at the core of it. And I realized what this problem really was when I buckled my seatbelt today.
Yeah, it's weird, but bear with me.
We don't have curbside recycling where I live, so we have to take our recyclables to a big dumpster-thing, and the one we always use is in the Home Depot parking lot. Today we went and dropped those off & then Hubby wanted to wander the store, so he started to pull over to a parking spot closer to the doors. He didn't buckle his seatbelt to move 50 feet. I did. And I realized I do for everything like that. Backing the car out of the driveway to trade parking spots? Buckled in. Moving across a parking lot? Buckled in. Running up the block to Kroger just to grab some key dinner ingredient? Buckled in.
What does this have to do with writing?
I stopped letting my writing goals be as natural for me as buckling my seatbelt.
I stopped pushing myself to do a certain word count every day. I mean, all my friends (writer & non-writer) said I was crazy, that I pushed myself too hard, that I didn't need to hit a certain number of words per day, so why make myself crazy?
After a while, I believed them. I mean, I was totally burnt out. Surely the reason was that I was pushing myself too hard, right?
Well, yes. And no.
I'm inherently lazy. I know that people who know writer-me don't necessarily believe me when I say this, but it's true. I've wasted a lot of time in my life. I get so easily sucked into ruts and patterns and this particular pattern I started of "being nicer to myself" wasn't working. I'd write a page or two and decide that was good enough for the day. I'd get a particularly grueling paragraph right and decide I'd earned an entire episode of Downton Abbey. In short, I was being too easy on myself-- which is not the same as being nice to myself. For a day or two, sure. But how does that help me meet my goals? It doesn't.
So now I'm trying to figure out how to differentiate between "killing myself" and "having high standards for myself." I don't want to lose the drive I acquired in the last four years. It's gotten me a long way, but at a point I also let it run me into the ground. I do not want to let that happen again, but nor do I want to let myself become slacker-me again.
Then the question is: how do I fix it? Well, for now I think I'm going to have to resort to things like word-count goals. While word counts don't necessarily mean a thing when looking at the quality of a product, or the usefulness of a product, it does give me a metric for if I'm on-track for my personal goals again. And I need a metric right now. I need to catch myself when I try to stop for the day and ask myself "is this really good enough for today or can I do a little bit more?" If the answer is that I can do more, I'll get up and walk around the house, do a load of laundry, something to rid myself of restless energy, and put my butt back in the chair and keep going.
Does anyone else do this? Or am I the only slacker-writer out here?
I really did think it had to do with me being temporarily sick of working with this particular set of characters, until yesterday. I opened up an extremely old backstory file and decided as an exercise to update it. I wrote 4 handwritten pages.
Obviously I'm not sick of these characters.
I keep pinning images of them or their clothes or furniture. I'm not tired of this story-- and if I get to do with it what I want to, I have two other manuscripts to write them through. So why have I been slacking?
Source: sunshineandpearls.tumblr.com via Kathleen on Pinterest
Finally I had to admit that though my wrists are part of it, though fatigue (mental and physical) is part of it, though I'm totally rewriting a story (which takes quite a bit of mental acrobatics), there's one problem at the core of it. And I realized what this problem really was when I buckled my seatbelt today.
Yeah, it's weird, but bear with me.
We don't have curbside recycling where I live, so we have to take our recyclables to a big dumpster-thing, and the one we always use is in the Home Depot parking lot. Today we went and dropped those off & then Hubby wanted to wander the store, so he started to pull over to a parking spot closer to the doors. He didn't buckle his seatbelt to move 50 feet. I did. And I realized I do for everything like that. Backing the car out of the driveway to trade parking spots? Buckled in. Moving across a parking lot? Buckled in. Running up the block to Kroger just to grab some key dinner ingredient? Buckled in.
What does this have to do with writing?
I stopped letting my writing goals be as natural for me as buckling my seatbelt.
I stopped pushing myself to do a certain word count every day. I mean, all my friends (writer & non-writer) said I was crazy, that I pushed myself too hard, that I didn't need to hit a certain number of words per day, so why make myself crazy?
After a while, I believed them. I mean, I was totally burnt out. Surely the reason was that I was pushing myself too hard, right?
Well, yes. And no.
I'm inherently lazy. I know that people who know writer-me don't necessarily believe me when I say this, but it's true. I've wasted a lot of time in my life. I get so easily sucked into ruts and patterns and this particular pattern I started of "being nicer to myself" wasn't working. I'd write a page or two and decide that was good enough for the day. I'd get a particularly grueling paragraph right and decide I'd earned an entire episode of Downton Abbey. In short, I was being too easy on myself-- which is not the same as being nice to myself. For a day or two, sure. But how does that help me meet my goals? It doesn't.
So now I'm trying to figure out how to differentiate between "killing myself" and "having high standards for myself." I don't want to lose the drive I acquired in the last four years. It's gotten me a long way, but at a point I also let it run me into the ground. I do not want to let that happen again, but nor do I want to let myself become slacker-me again.
Then the question is: how do I fix it? Well, for now I think I'm going to have to resort to things like word-count goals. While word counts don't necessarily mean a thing when looking at the quality of a product, or the usefulness of a product, it does give me a metric for if I'm on-track for my personal goals again. And I need a metric right now. I need to catch myself when I try to stop for the day and ask myself "is this really good enough for today or can I do a little bit more?" If the answer is that I can do more, I'll get up and walk around the house, do a load of laundry, something to rid myself of restless energy, and put my butt back in the chair and keep going.
Does anyone else do this? Or am I the only slacker-writer out here?