how hard i have it
Now, to be fair:
Monday I took my confused 11 or 12 pages to a less-confused 22 pages (and it only took me eight hours after work of sitting in the same chair and working at it).
Tuesday night, Writing Group failed to happen (as it does once in a while) so I met with Pat at a bar, and managed to eke some comments about the first half of those 22 pages out of him before Joseph showed up and we went into karaoke-fun mode. (The only reason I didn't try to coerce critique from Joseph as well was he showed up later, having been invited by Pat because I foolishly assumed he'd be busy or tired of us.)
Wednesday night, I revised lightly before giving in to peer pressure and going out for a pleasant night of drinking, pub food, swapping ex-girlfriend anecdotes and general commiseration male-bonding, before coming home to pay rent, watch Lost, and feel bad for myself about how little I accomplished.
Tonight (Thursday), I turned my confused 22 pages into a confused 30. All while blowing off no less than four interesting invites and a couple of different people asking "why don't you ever come out when I invite you?" All while talking to my dear friend about her envy-inspiringly existent lovelife. All while listening to jazz and cursing under my breath about how little I was accomplishing. And so on.
The thing is, my scenes are not funny. They are not fun. They are dry, leaden, exposition-heavy stuff with 3x as much dialogue as they should have, and with characters whose goals, directions and objectives are muddled or nonexistent. I hate them all. Even the not-so-bad ones, but especially the oh-so-bad ones -- which is most of them. I hate every word I've written so far.
There is a Thomas Mann quote I have tossed about lightly of late: A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. I have been miserable lately, as I push myself deeper into the actual writing of this thing. I'm very hard on myself, yes, but I'm also a very sloppy, mindless writer at times and I get bogged down in all the wrong details on my first draft. I've gotten quite a bit better at outlining and structure, and I've always been decent with themes, but I have a long, long way to go when it comes to scene design and characterization. Injecting emotion and purpose into my lifeless, windbaggy pages. Making the story live, rather than lie there limply, a lump. A big sucky lump.
But as I say: to be fair, I've come a long way this week. Just not far enough. Or I've been hitting quantity at the expense of quality. Whatever the case may be, I push myself so hard that when I'm in this zone I'm quite miserable, and no doubt miserable company, and I know no solution. Writing is very, very hard, and unpleasant, and I tend to bitch too much on Twitter as I go. The real honest truth is, I'm at my least happy when I'm actually putting words on the page.
I've got to figure out how to remain positive as I go, for one. Both externally and (more importantly) internally. I've got, also, to figure out how to maintain focus and discipline. I'm doing well to keep pushing forward, but I too easily lose track of what my scene should be about, and find myself rewriting and re-rewriting single scenes half a dozen times before getting to the next one. I have an outline. It ought to be a cakewalk.
Well, it never is. It's never a cakewalk. Nothing makes me more uncomfortable or less happy with my entire life than writing. You'd think this is the kind of thing I'd never want to do, ever, under any circumstance, but that's not how it works. Thomas Mann is right. This is how it goes, I think. It's hard, it hurts, it makes me feel lousy and weak and vulnerable and inept, and I wouldn't stop for anything. It's all I want to be doing, all the time. It's all I think about. I'm a writer. That means more to me than anything.
Cursed and blessed for it, I guess. Sworn enemy of the blank page.
