Terrible Writer

Yup, I'm officially a terrible writer.  I said I would start writing and posting again at the start of the New Year, and here we are, most of the way through April, and I have yet to do either.  In my defense, my life has been hella crazy...  I picked up a second part-time job, so that's keeping me busy, along with my full time job, and my glass/mirror etching on the side. 

I have been thinking about the transition that has been giving me so many issues over the past several months, and I still haven't quite decided how I'm going to work around it.  My goal is start carrying my net book around with me, since it's cute and small and fits nicely in my purse so when I have a few spare minutes, I can jot down some notes, and try to work through this transition.  It's a good thing I decided not to set a time-table on this project, because I would be terribly behind and very likely discouraged :-p

Baby steps!  I'll get there :-)

Time Out

Well, my writing has DEFINITELY fallen off over the past few weeks.  I am working on a new hobby- etching glass and mirrors- and as I am now taking orders for the holidays, most of my spare time is taken up with that.  I am still thinking about the direction of my story every day, and still seem to be stuck, for whatever reason.  It is most frustrating.

However, with the business of my new hobby, and an attempt save my sanity,  have decided to walk away from the story for a little while.  After the holidays, and my days are not taken up with etching, I will resume.  It has been a decision that I have been struggling with, but I have the support of an amazing partner who promises to give me a kick in the @$$ in mid-January if I am still procrastinating. 

So, for a month or so, farewell.  But please, keep checking back in the unlikely event that I am able to get some time to myself to work this block I've got going on, in which case, I will post!  If I don't post before, have an amazing holiday season, and I will write again next year :-p

Realizations

Well, I finally sat my ass down tonight and wrote about 2 pages.  About time!  I haven't written in about a month, and as much as I would like to attribute it to the double tooth extractions I had a few weeks ago, or the writer's block that I've been having, or to the busy-ness of my new schedule with my new hobby of glass etching which I take to craft fairs, really what it boils down to is straight up laziness.

My goal to write a little every has definitely fallen to the wayside over the past few weeks.  I have come to discover that I simply cannot write at home.  There are entirely too many distractions for me and I can't bring myself to ignore everything and sit down and write.  I tried writing at Starbucks and was able to churn out a solid few pages.  I decided that I need to not write at home.  I need to write somewhere else.  And my desire to write a little every day is just not going to happen.  I have a new routine, and in order to get my etching done, and go to the gym at least three times a week, I simply don't have anything left to write at night.  So, I have decided to devote Tuesdays and Thursdays to writing.

After work on Tuesdays and Thursdays, I am going to go somewhere in town right after work and write for an hour.  That puts me home around 6:30, which gives me plenty time to make dinner and wind down before I have to go bed.  I generally don't go to the gym on Tuesdays or Thursdays anyway, so I don't really feel the absence of home for that hour. 

I'm hoping this new routine will work out.  Today was day one, and I'm going to give it a few weeks.  If it doesn't work, I'll have to re-evaluate again.  But this is what life is about, right?  Trying new things, adapting, and finding something that works.

Well, I've dropped the ball not only on posting but on writing in general.  I had two teeth extracted a little over a week ago, and I haven't really been thinking about writing.  I have a hard time writing at home now.  There are too many things to distract me, and I haven't been feeling well enough to drag my lazy, tired butt to the library or Starbucks to write.  Now that my stitches are out, I am hoping to get back to the game.

Sat in Starbucks today to write a little, and was able to churn out a solid page.  I'm content with what I wrote, and am looking forward to digging a little deeper into the relationship of two of my main characters.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with Gabriel Masterson, the random character that appeared earlier.  I know he is going to be a huge player sometime down the road, I'm just not quite sure where, and if he's going to be a good player or a bad player.  It is still undecided. 

I can tell that I am going to need to dwell pretty deeply into his character and see what kind of person he really is.  I think I am going to like him, good player or bad.  I also started getting a little deeper into another character, Jamie, who plays a huge role in the relationship between my two main characters. 

Ahh, I'm giving away too much!

I was able to lose myself briefly in my story again today, but so far, I have not been able to replicate the complete immersion that I experienced when I was writing at the Bangor Public Library.  Somehow, no matter where I am in my house, I find something to distract myself.  I am starting to think that I should take some time during the week, once or twice, to hang out at the library after work and the gym to get some writing done.

My paragraphs from today are ok.  They aren't particularly amazing, but every line of my story can't be perfectly amazing, right? 

I actually had to force myself to walk away from writing tonight.  I am working on a very emotional scene, one that I was unaware that I was so personally attached to.  Jaxon is remembering, and the emotion in those memories are emotions I remember feeling at one point, emotions that I had thought I was able to put to rest.  Emotions that I thought I had dealt with already, analyzed them, accepted them, and then let them go.  I am realizing as I am writing that this might be the case.

I have a terrible habit of taking my feelings and shoving them into a little black box to deal with when I have "more time."  What I am realizing is that I never really deal with them.  I put them in this little black box, shove in the back of my mind and throw away the key and forget that they exist.  Until something pops up that reopens that box, and I am forced to revisit them.  But inevitably, I fight them back into their box.  This can't be healthy.

Perhaps my writing will become more therapeutic that I realized.  Not that I have a book's worth of unsolved emotions, but it has been so long since I have used writing as a form of self- analysis and "therapy" that I had forgotten how powerful my reactions to writing fiction based on similar experiences can be.  The next few pages are going to be hard.  But part of me is looking forward to facing these feelings and actually dealing with them.  And part of me is terrified about what I may rediscover.  What will these feelings hold for me?  Will they set me back, make me question myself and some of my decisions?  Or will they reinforce my beliefs, the values, the very core of who I think I am?