Becoming a Writer (getting to know myself)

There were a couple of summers, once I realized I wanted to be a professional writer, when I spent a significant chunk of time each day for a matter of weeks or months, working on writing projects. And, in this way, I got through a couple of drafts that didn't work, but became a bit discouraged that I didn't get any closer than I did to anything publishable. (But at least now I know that I CAN blitz my focus like that, which is indeed useful to know.)

The problem was, I became so discouraged that I stopped writing regularly, which was a problem. Finally towards the end of 2016 I decided to address it, so for 2017 my writing goal was to write for ten minutes a week-- and I made it! And I often wrote a lot more than ten minutes. It felt really good to be able to set an achievable goal and to feel the sense of accomplishment from meeting it over and over and over.

In December of 2017, a friend found out that I was trying to become a writer, and that I was writing for ten minutes a week, and she said what I had been thinking all along: that's not enough! You have to write more than that! Which wouldn't have been helpful in 2016, but in 2017 it hit me just right. Thus, a couple of weeks ago, I set a new, too-small-but-still-not-happening-regularly goal: I work for an hour a week on my writing.

Before I did that, though, I had to sit down and decide what I wanted to work on. In the past, remembering that in college I had done better during spring and summer terms (block classes) than fall or winter term (regular-length, and more of them) I had cut down the number of writing projects I was working on to one fiction and one nonfiction. And I don't regret this. I made real progress on both of these. But in late December (as in, last month), as I considered expanding my writing time, I realized that I really wanted to start something fresh, while not abandoning the old projects. And I remembered that there was that one term when I took 19 credit hours and got straight As-- so, sometimes it's a good idea for me to try a lot of things at once.

So here's the plan. I'm still working on my dad's biography; I have no idea what I'm doing, and therefore no idea when I will finish, but at the moment I'm still getting new information from interviewing him, his brothers, and his sisters-in-law, among others, so I figure I'll work on what to do with it once I have it all down. I'm also working on the fantasy novel I've been working on FOR.EV.ER. I've seriously wondered if I should abandon it, but again, even though I feel like I have no idea what I'm doing or when I will be able to finish, I'm still making progress at making it a better story, so I'm just plugging away (but not very fast).

I'm also blogging again (obvs.) and also starting a new non-fiction project, which I'm afraid to write about here because I've talked it up to so many people already, and I'm a little afraid that I won't get it done and that I will disappoint all the people. But the weird thing about it is, all that advice about "turn off your internal editor"? Yeah, it's actually relevant for this one. (I tried it for the fantasy novel last time I blitzed it and wrote 40,000 words of which I hated about 30,000 words, so it isn't always good advice.) In this case, my internal editor is saying kind of stupid things like, "you'll never finish," or "You're just blathering on and on; no one wants to hear what you have to say about this." THAT's the kind of internal voice you need to ignore.

Which is not to say that I wouldn't be deeply embarrassed if my first draft were to see the light of day. It's just that I know from experience that listening to stupid voices like that will lead to never getting said first draft finished, which is the absolute requirement for being able to get to the later, better drafts.

And here's the last thing. I'm a little extra-weirded-out by this, but it looks like having more projects to work on is motivating me work more on each one, which means that so far I'm not working an hour a week on writing; I'm working, like, four hours minimum. (It has helped that the weeks thus far have included vacation and/or snow days). Notwithstanding how very weird I find this, I'll TAKE it.

I'll let you know how it goes. :)