All Entries Tagged With: "depression"
Excuses, excuses
I’ve been dealing with a lot of the fantastic writing excuses lately. Not feeling well, too tired, we’re dogsitting and the puppy is having way too much loud fun antagonizing my 10 year old dog, I’m hungry, I need to shower…
When really what my deal is I’ve had a bit of confidence loss. I’ve been fairly transparent on my blog and podcast about my writing career from when this thing launched almost three and a half years ago, and so right now it feels weird because a couple of things have come down that I can’t talk about. And this isn’t one of those, “Squeee! I’ll tell you all about it when the contracts are signed.” No, my career took a bit of a step backward and I am not comfortable discussing the details publicly. But my confidence is shaken and my writing is suffering.
And the thing is, if I were a listener writing to me with this question, I know what I’d say. “Suck it up. We all slip up. Even when things are going great in your career, you’re going to have setbacks. Don’t let it affect the one thing you love, regardless of setbacks, and that’s putting words on paper.”
I have given myself some “feel sorry for myself” time, and I’ve made plans for my next steps, but I haven’t been writing much this week. OK, I haven’t been writing at all. Now’s the time to get back on that damn horse. Some of my favorite bloggers/writers have spoken of this recently. Tobias Buckell (who, incidentally, I’ll be interviewing soon) said:
Sometimes, I meet people who’ve spent their lives fiddling around trying to find the perfect tool. They wait to learn, they wait for life experience, they wait for inspiration, the perfect first line, the perfect idea, they clutter their lives with all manners of things.
They’ve spent 10 years trying to find a bandsaw to cut a 2X4.
And Cory Doctorow recently had a Locus column on Writing in the Age of Distraction:
- Don’t be ceremonious
Forget advice about finding the right atmosphere to coax your muse into the room. Forget candles, music, silence, a good chair, a cigarette, or putting the kids to sleep. It’s nice to have all your physical needs met before you write, but if you convince yourself that you can only write in a perfect world, you compound the problem of finding 20 free minutes with the problem of finding the right environment at the same time. When the time is available, just put fingers to keyboard and write. You can put up with noise/silence/kids/discomfort/hunger for 20 minutes.
And that’s really what I need to remember. There’s no worry about making it perfect. There’s no dealing with stress so bad I can’t write for 20 min. Sure, I have been in a bad mood, which hinders my writing, but wouldn’t it do me some good to get my mind off of the badness, to deal with (or invent) some problems for some other people for a change?
In short, get off your ass, Lafferty. Just write the damn thing.
