This Year’s Project is… Writing
I’ve been dreading this post. Why? Because I don’t like resolutions.
This is where I fall in ranks with my fellow writers and announce my writing project for the year, and that feels an awful lot like a resolution: This year I resolve to write THIS much. It’s not that I don’t think trying to better myself, or challenge myself is a good thing. And it’s not that I think resolutions are a contrived, tired way to procrastinate actually doing something. I don’t like resolutions because I’m bad at them. Just really, terrible.
No matter how well-intentioned my resolution may be, no matter how well-planned, and step-by-step detailed, my subconscious rails with juvenile abandon at what it sees as false constraints by finding something—anything—else to do. The surest way for me to catch up on my housework, web-design, and new-found art hobby, is to tell myself that I plan to write for 30 minutes each day. When that half-hour rolls around, the closet-full of wrinkled clothes, will suddenly start scratching at my unconscious mind. And that article in Wired will whisper in my ear until I read it.
All my life I’ve railed against external constraints. For a resolution to work, I not only have to know, and agree with the rationale. I also have to feel it. This is one of the reasons I’ve never been able to develop a regular writing habit. It’s also the reason I’ve never been able to make myself stick to a healthy diet. I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve convinced myself that it was time to abandon the diet of my active youth, and start minding what I eat. And the effects have never truly lasted more than a week or two. But last week, with no proclamation, without even a conscious decision, I’ve started making positive changes to my diet. I have yet to see if this change will stick, but because it was based on something internal—how I felt about myself and my health—and not an external construct—I know I should eat better—then it might—MIGHT—last longer than past attempts.
So when I first read that each writer on this blog was supposed to choose a writing project for this year, I began to dread the decision. In my head I knew that I should take the novel idea I’ve been playing with for the last few years and promise to finish a first draft. This would be the logical choice. I have characters that are well-formed, a funny concept, and copious notes on the fantasy world the characters will explore on their epic quest. In my head it’s a good idea.
But inside I’ve been railing against it. I’ve been struggling with depression for several months, which has severely limited my writing, and also put a damper on my mood. Were I to promise to you that I would complete a novel-length rough draft this year, this would be committing myself to at least three discrete things. 1) Getting over my mental depression enough to write comedy. 2) Getting over my physical depression enough to motivate myself to write, every week. 3) Effectively changing long-standing habits, by making myself write regularly. And in my heart I know that’s a lot of pressure to put on a single resolution.
So instead I’ve decided to start smaller.
My Project for this year is to go through all of my rough-drafts, half-completed stories, notes, scribbles, ideas, and snippets of dialogue. For the notes and such, I will decide whether they are worth keeping, and if they are force them into some sort of organizational structure so they are usable, and not scattered across a dozen formats and locations. And for those rough drafts, and half-completed stories I will either finish them, or admit to myself that they are dead, and move on to the next one.
And I will complete ten stories. If I am lucky enough to be included in any of eMergent Publishing’s anthologies for this year, then I will happily participate. But the rest of my focus will be to write the best of the ideas I have loved at one time or another during the past several years. Foremost among these is a lengthy short-story that I completed several years ago, and then decided I didn’t like the ending. It’s a hard(ish) sci-fi story, whose magic comes from the voice of the first-person narrator. And once I put the project away for a while I’ve had immense trouble getting her voice back. That story is priority one. But it won’t be the first I tackle, because I don’t think it’s a fair burden to put on myself that I slay my nemesis right off. I’ll use one or two other stories to try to prime the creative pump before I head there.
And at the end of the year, while it’s not a specific goal, if those ten stories can be used as my own anthology, then the next step in my own writers journey should be clear.
I don’t know how it is to write through depression, but I know that it is possible. And worth it. If it’s possible to find a way back into the head of the narrator in the hard(ish) sci-fi piece, you know you’ll hear a marvelous whoop echoing all the way from Tucson.