Could it be that I was born without a clue to carry on?
This past Saturday was January 6th which is also known as "Ephiphany" and I didn't really put it together until yesterday that it was aptly named for myself, as I had two realizations and given that I am prone to hyperbole (sometimes referred to as "drama queen"), I could easily call these realizations an "epiphany". Although, I don't know, maybe the one about parental stuff was epiphany and the second one about writing was just bullisht -- I'm still trying to figure it out.
See, I realized I hate my novel. I said it outloud at one point while walking around: I hate my novel. It felt liberating to say aloud, in this quiet way, apropos of nothing, not in the middle of a tantrum or beating myself up for not being productive way. I don't just hate writing it, I hate thinking about what the fck the two people are doing and why anyone would care and how they are seeing the world and why I should look at it and how to connect all these bits of chapters I've been forcing myself to write for the past 2 months. And I immediately thought, ok, this is ok! I just need to make my novel something I don't hate, something fun and interesting to me again, like it used to be, and then I will get back into it. And it was ok.
Except, a few days later, it's not. I still hate it and maybe I loathe it more with each passing minute. I see other books being published currently that have similar characters and/or themes and I sigh and get angry at myself for being slow. I see cover articles of magazines featuring guys who could be my main character. It just all seems too late, time to move on.
But then again, this could just be Naysayer Me talking. Maybe it's easier to hate it because then I can not finish it, and not finishing it is what I've sort of been doing all along anyway. Maybe I should start a new project and see if that feels better. Though I suspect the new project will feel good and great for awhile, then I'll start to hate that too. Then I could go back to this novel. Except honesty, would I do that? Or would this be another Unfinished Raymond Project forever in production?
Or maybe I should just fucking churn out 100 more pages and end the fcking thing cause it's just really a first draft and put it in a drawer for awhile and let myself pout and hate it as much as I want while this draft is done. What's today, January 9th? Ok, I'm going to write 100 pages by the end of the month. I don't care if one of the chapters is a flashback about alien abduction and another chapter is a character listing all their sexual exploits. I'm just going to fucking finish something, even if it becomes a bizarre polemic in the loose form of a novel.
Forget inspiration -- I think anger and disappointment turns out more pages. The beautiful song of a muse is fleeting and hard to hear, but the spring of rage inside carried at all times can be tapped into at anytime.
See, I realized I hate my novel. I said it outloud at one point while walking around: I hate my novel. It felt liberating to say aloud, in this quiet way, apropos of nothing, not in the middle of a tantrum or beating myself up for not being productive way. I don't just hate writing it, I hate thinking about what the fck the two people are doing and why anyone would care and how they are seeing the world and why I should look at it and how to connect all these bits of chapters I've been forcing myself to write for the past 2 months. And I immediately thought, ok, this is ok! I just need to make my novel something I don't hate, something fun and interesting to me again, like it used to be, and then I will get back into it. And it was ok.
Except, a few days later, it's not. I still hate it and maybe I loathe it more with each passing minute. I see other books being published currently that have similar characters and/or themes and I sigh and get angry at myself for being slow. I see cover articles of magazines featuring guys who could be my main character. It just all seems too late, time to move on.
But then again, this could just be Naysayer Me talking. Maybe it's easier to hate it because then I can not finish it, and not finishing it is what I've sort of been doing all along anyway. Maybe I should start a new project and see if that feels better. Though I suspect the new project will feel good and great for awhile, then I'll start to hate that too. Then I could go back to this novel. Except honesty, would I do that? Or would this be another Unfinished Raymond Project forever in production?
Or maybe I should just fucking churn out 100 more pages and end the fcking thing cause it's just really a first draft and put it in a drawer for awhile and let myself pout and hate it as much as I want while this draft is done. What's today, January 9th? Ok, I'm going to write 100 pages by the end of the month. I don't care if one of the chapters is a flashback about alien abduction and another chapter is a character listing all their sexual exploits. I'm just going to fucking finish something, even if it becomes a bizarre polemic in the loose form of a novel.
Forget inspiration -- I think anger and disappointment turns out more pages. The beautiful song of a muse is fleeting and hard to hear, but the spring of rage inside carried at all times can be tapped into at anytime.