Weekly Words 15-21/04/2019

15/04/2019

Revision

So last week I thought that there were still 115 pages of Mark and Jessie to read through and makes notes on, and I quivered with fear before consuming a live African Grey Hornbill out of spite. Then I opened up the manuscript PDF today to start doing my “get shit done” thing, and because I had forgotten just how many pages I had doomed myself to reading each Monday until these damn revision notes are made, I opened up the calculator app and did some math.

The good news: it’s not 115 pages left.

The bad news: it’s 165 pages left.

That means reading 55 pages every Monday, and making revision notes, of this excruciatingly unbearable-to-read zero draft from over a decade ago manuscript for the next three weeks, starting this week.

But, like the total alpha Ubermensch that I am, this did not cause me dismay or lessen my resolve, nay! Rather but it increased my desire to get the shit done in a way that it will get did, and all the more ingenious was the plan that arose from this collision of expectations with true proof of reality, for it will in fact lessen the agony of reading another 165 pages of this edgelord stream-of-consciousness journal entry of a manuscript.

Because the only way I’m going to get this done without hating myself for choosing to do it is to read really fast. And the faster I read, the less awful what I’m reading will seem, right? True, I might miss out on a few gems of ideas here and there, but to be real my revision notes on Mark and Jessie have not been the best thus far, and I’m not going to make myself read it all over again just to be thorough because most of it is pretty hopeless in terms of reusing it. Thus, concluding my revision notes with a skim-read to take in the major plot elements and maybe pick out some nice character moments or lines of dialogue seems like the best way to go, both in terms of achieving the goal that I set for myself of actually completing this read-through on the 28th, and in terms of making more coherent, less gratuitous revision notes that might actually help me when I get around to rebooting this thing.

Because, I mean, it has to be a reboot. There is no way I can salvage this entire manuscript, or even a large minority of it, just by creatively shifting scenes around and tweaking a few things here and there. The scenes and events aren’t totally hopeless in a broad-strokes sort of way, but the particulars – and especially the voice – are just wrong. They need to be bulldozed so that something better can take their place.

I’m sort of looking forward to revision notes today now, with this new, liberating prospect of being allowed to skim-read this thing. But I’m also going to stick to my plan of limiting myself to one-hour shifts of revision-note-making, between which I will … quick brain think of something …

Write. I’ll do some writing. And specifically, I will write those projects that I’ve been afraid to start writing because it will expose my inherent creative fraudulence to the world by doing so, because until I get some sweet, sweet therapy in my life, I’ve got to work with what I’ve got. Hopefully that includes being able to, at least for a while, power through some of this existential perfectionist anxiety that I have about trying to realise some of my favourite ideas in written form.

Also, I think I need to revert back to that plan I had for like half a week where I stop using any screen-related technology after 10pm so that I can wake up at a reasonable hour and potentially even sleep better. And get back into regular exercise. My brother and I just cleaned out a bunch of stuff from the garage which has opened up our home gym for use again, plus granted me access to my bike, which I haven’t seen in like a year and a half, so I have more options in that department than I did a week ago.

Okay, big ambitious week, let’s get started.

***

You know what? I underestimated the brilliance of this plan. I’m not going to finish this read-through on the 28th.

I’m going to finish it today.

Because those 55 pages flew the fuck by; I am now finished, one hour after starting, and that’s because not only is this PDF formatted to approximate the same size of pages and font as a “real novel”, but a good 10-15 of those pages were absolute pointless filler bullshit, and I think I can reliably trust my past self to continue with that trend for the rest of this manuscript.

Also, the one character that exists in this manuscript who is so much too good for it that it’s actually a bit distressing continues to be way too good for it, she even has an honest-to-god character arc and it’s compelling and just … what did I do to deserve this character? In this manuscript of all places? I guess I had something going on when I wrote this after all.

So yeah, the speed-reading strategy was definitely the way to go. Shit is getting did.

***

Just another 55 pages to go … I’m not sure if I’ll finish today; I did want to get some writing done. But then again, if finishing this readthrough and revision-note-taking is my work for the day, I will feel pretty damn satisfied with myself for doing it, even if I don’t do any writing.

Nah, that’s it for the day. I can finish next Monday. I woke up late today, and that’s something I want to change, but I also want some downtime today that fits with my no-screens-after-10pm plan, and it’s 6:15pm now and I still need to eat dinner …

Today has gone pretty damn well, honestly. I’m a bit proud of myself for it.

Looking forward to tomorrow oh wait Tallulah shit maybe not …

16/04/2019

Revisiohno

I’m not entirely sure why suddenly the prospect of reading Tallulah and making revision notes fills me with dread, when four Tuesdays ago I actually felt like I was getting back into the groove with it. I’m writing this before opening the PDF to start reading and note-making, and after yesterday’s smashing success of speed-reading the hell out of a poorly-written manuscript that is mostly describing the scenery and the two main characters having conversations that you might have in real life but have no place in a story, I ought to be feeling confident that I can complete today’s workload with flying colours.

Instead, I feel this horrible sense of foreboding, like as soon as I open this document I’m going to fall into a trap that I can’t escape from. I’m not sure if this is just because I’m on kind of a high with Mark and Jessie right now and don’t want to divert my energy into another project, or if it’s because I’m just over Tallulah right now, or if it’s because the way I’ve been making notes on Tallulah isn’t helpful – or some other thing that I can’t think of. All I know is that I really, really do not want to open this document and start reading.

I also didn’t do any writing yesterday, and I ended up waking up really late today; I think it might be the weather/daylight savings more than anything, but regardless of the reason behind it I am sick of waking up in the afternoon. I would probably feel less reluctance committing what few hours of waking time I have left to today’s revision note-making if I had woken up two or three hours earlier. I would say “well I just won’t sleep until tomorrow evening and reset my internal clock”, but I’m 32 next week, I don’t need that shit in my life.

Basically, right now I feel like I’ve already failed at everything I had intended to do today because I don’t have any time left to do it in. Which is silly, because considering how long it didn’t take me to read 110 pages of a shitty manuscript yesterday, doing the same with Tallulah should be a walk in the park.

Okay. Venting done. Let’s get to work, brain.

***

So, after an hour and a quarter, I have looked briefly at the Tallulah PDF, found the last batch of chapter summaries and notes that I made on Tallulah back in 2017 in the hope that it would circumvent my need to read this manuscript again, and updated my Tallulah writing playlist on Spotify.

This isn’t helping.

I’m having the same problem getting invested with this revision process as I had in 2017: Tallulah isn’t a story I would bother telling anymore. I came up with the idea when I was 23, started writing when I was 25, and now it’s 7 years later – perfect timing for me to return to it, in terms of selkie lore – and I’m a different writer, and while Tallulah as a character means so much to me and I like the story angle, the version of the story that I’ve got to work with doesn’t help me tell a good story according to my current … whatever. Tastes, values, sensibilities, increased experience when it comes to actually writing a book, increased experience in general that makes the manuscript’s flaws stand out that much more, the fact that after 7 years the core issues are still exactly what they were at the start of this ongoing, stop-and-start process and while I came up with some solutions I’ve sort of forgotten them because I was a moron and didn’t write them down when they came to mind …

I think there’s still some value in a re-read with minor notes. I could use that 2017 chapter summary, but I can’t remember or re-create the exact insights that I had while reading it, and the notes themselves don’t give me the sense of flow from chapter to chapter or the way that events string together that I’d need to make a proper plan. So I think I’ll just start over and this time be looking at broad story elements to migrate into a reboot, because as I concluded back in 2017 or at the start of 2018 or whenever it was that I last decided to take Tallulah off the back burner, the only way I can tell this story now is by telling it in a different way.

There’s also another reason, and it’s one that I’ve found a struggle for a long time with my writing. Tallulah was written partly to give voice to my sense of loneliness, low self-esteem, depression, and what I would later come to know as social anxiety; I felt like the selkie metaphor worked perfectly as a way to examine these feelings and the experience of living with these issues. Yet reading back over it now, it’s clear to me that I didn’t actually manage to do it, and that infuriates me. The fact that I can live with a mental illness yet be unable to recognise any of my own experience reflected in my own writing of it – that’s even more discouraging than all the awful, tone-dissonant nonsense in Mark and Jessie. I can’t even think of trying to write Tallulah that way now, and that’s sort of the core of her characterisation in the current version of the story. I can only think of telling her story if she’s someone I can relate to, and I can’t relate to the character I wrote in 2012, even with the 2015 revision in play. I feel it’s a personal failing, being unable to give voice to my own experiences in a way that is even a little bit understandable – or, at least, understandable to me. I don’t get why I can’t do it.

Of course, there’s also the fact that Tallulah was written stream-of-consciousness and that often doesn’t make sense if you read back on it later; it makes sense in the moment. But honestly, I just don’t want to write such a sad story. I think it wouldn’t be healthy for me right now. Maybe one day when I’ve had all the therapy and am more resilient, I can revisit that kind of story. Right now, though, I feel like I need to focus on doing things that don’t cost me so much to try and get right. If I’m going to write about mental illness, I want to get it right, and I have not a lot of faith in myself to be able to do that right now without risking falling back into some unhealthy habits that I’ve done a lot of work to try and grow out of.

Also I have spent most of today just kind of messing around, so perhaps I’ll designate Tuesdays as a day off, or a writing day as opposed to a revision day. I find that after I’ve done a whole bunch of revision I don’t actually have much energy for trying to write things that I’m anxious about writing, so maybe Tallulah Tuesday will be better served as Trepidation Tuesday going forward.

Working title. But the alliteration is non-negotiable.

17/04/2019

Revision

Maybe Tryhard Tuesday. Because I feel like a tryhard whenever I read back what I’ve written on these finicky projects that terrify me, but also because I do in fact want to try hard to get them written.

Wolf Gang is …

I mean, I am loath to call it “good”, but it’s … really solid as a starting-point for a pretty decent book. At least in my humble never-published-a-book-before opinion. The chapters could use some small detail work, but in broad strokes most of the changes that need to be made are just shifting scenes to different parts of the story, tweaking some of the more, ahem, problematic elements of the story to be not-awful, and adding in a few new scenes, maybe a new chapter or two to flesh a few plot points and story elements out.

I spent 2 hours going over 35 pages because I had so many little notes to take of these minor tweaks; I think I did have to write that stuff down, but maybe I’m wrong. I definitely prefer the speed-reading tactic; but honestly this manuscript is in a good enough state – so far, 3 chapters in – that looking at the finer details is actually beneficial.

But maybe that doesn’t actually matter. Maybe a speed-read and brief notes are all I need; I had a lot of particular ideas that I wrote down, and maybe those didn’t need to be revision notes, just brainstorming that I could have put somewhere else – but I guess that still means I needed to write it down somewhere. Well, regardless, I feel like it was 2 hours well spent.

Still no writing done this week; well I’ve got the rest of the week to make up for that, and I’m feeling relatively optimistic about actually doing it. I woke up late today as well, but instead of sinking into despair and apathy I decided to be a teensy bit hardcore and went for a half-hour walk and did a little workout in our now-accessible-because-we-actually-moved-some-of-our-mountain-of-shit-in-the-garage home gym, and seven and a half hours later I still feel really refreshed and energised. I think I could get used to this routine, though we’ll see if my muscles agree with me tomorrow morning …

If I wake up in the morning tomorrow. Which, hey, I might. I remember when I first started getting serious about exercise, sleep came much easier to me and I woke up with way more energy and at an earlier time than before, so with any luck I’ve set myself up for a repeat of that pleasant experience. Only one way to find out.

19-20/04/2019

Nothing At All

And damn did it feel good.

I think it’ll feel even better, though, if I ramp up my workload over the “workdays” I’ve set up for myself, because actually I’m really enjoying the experience of committing more time and energy into my projects. This is one of those so-basic-you-shouldn’t-need-to-explain-it life lessons that is all super profound to me right now because I’m actually doing it and understanding how and why it works – but it’s also not writing.

And I’m okay with that for the most part. It is actually taking a lot of energy and focus just to manage what I’ve been managing the past couple of weeks, and it’s not a ton compared to the work I know other people put in with their projects (or actual jobs). Something’s gotta give, and right now the writing projects that I have – well, I do want to break through my anxiety-wall with them, but I also don’t want to just be drained and distracted and forcing myself through the motions for the sake of filling a quota without actually getting good work done. Having said that, I do think I can manage more, and maybe that’s because now that I’ve gotten myself into something like a routine I’m developing project-stamina or something. In any event, I am pleased with the results so far, and look forward to having them continue for the foreseeable future.

I also decided to look at the document that I put into my main project folder entitled “narrowing”, as in narrowing down my options of what projects to focus on, choosing between new projects and projects that I’ve already done work on. Basically what I’m doing right now – except this document was written 13 months ago. And it’s almost exactly the same plan; it’s even the same writing projects. The only difference is that now I’m doing one project per day each week, whereas the “narrowing” plan was to focus on a single project intensively for 2 weeks straight. I think it’s quite telling that this plan is the one that seems to be working, whereas I can’t even remember what, if anything, came of the other one. I think I did read through at least some of each of the manuscripts, but in terms of making a plan – definitely in terms of making a decision – not so effective. I’m thinking maybe I’m starting to recognise and prioritise plans that work for me as opposed to plans that I feel should work.

At least as far as making revision notes goes. So far, no dice on the actual-writing front, or not for the projects that I keep trying to convince myself it’ll be worth my while to do some work on. Obviously, the lesson I’m supposed to learn here is that I need to recognise and prioritise the things that work for me blah blah blah. Which isn’t, like, incorrect. I have a history of being really stupid about the way I approach self-directed work, insisting not just that “x thing has to get done” but that “x thing has to get done exactly like this“, and being very reluctant to drop a bad plan even when it’s proven not to work.

But I was also thinking of Tallulah some more, the fact that it being a story I never thought I would try to tell was so important to me at the time, yet not so much anymore – and I was thinking about High Fantasy, a genre that I insisted for years was my favourite, yet when I stopped to think about it, whenever I looked online or in book stores (I’m old okay), nothing from the genre actually seemed … appealing. In the slightest. I’m not saying there’s nothing out there for me; I’m saying that I had an idea about myself and I stuck with it, despite the fact that every time I confronted the reality of it, it was blatantly untrue.

I think the first time I made one of these big identity-forming decisions was when I decided that lasagne was my favourite food when I was about 9 years old, not because I’d actually had it and liked it, but because it was Garfield’s favourite food. I mean, also because it was meat and pasta and cheese, and even just writing that it still sounds pretty damn good. Now, to my 9-year-old credit, when I did actually eventually have lasagne it was, in fact, pretty damn good, and for years it was my favourite food. But then I discovered roast duck, and god-diddly-damn there is nothing in this world that tops good roast duck for me now. And I think that’s one of the few times in my life that I’ve actually been willing to change my mind about what I think of myself, the little bits of trivia and grand mission statements that I’ve made about myself over the years, based on reality.

The reason that I’m bringing all of this up now is because the big writing projects that I’m super keen to get started on while simultaneously being terrified of even making a start on because I don’t know where to start, I haven’t thought it through enough, I’m not ready to just dive in and improv my way through it because it has to be perfect – those are High Fantasy projects. A lot of these too-big projects of mine that exist solely in brainstorm documents and tepid, half-finished first chapters are High Fantasy projects. I’m starting to wonder why, exactly, my story ideas do keep up leaning in that direction when 1) I don’t really like the genre myself, and 2) they’re projects that time and time again I prove to myself I am not invested in enough to actually get them written. There’s definitely the culture aspect of it, the genre expectations that go with the genre – world-building, the magic system, the economy, politics, all of this shit that honestly I do find interesting but don’t feel compelled to focus on because those aren’t the kinds of stories I’m interested in telling … is that it? I mean, is that all of it? Maybe it is. There’s definitely a strong sense that I get, when I think of embarking on any of my projects that falls, at least broadly, into the High Fantasy mold, that I’m not allowed to tell a High Fantasy story if I don’t have all of these boxes checked. There’s also the question of, if I don’t want to check those boxes, is it actually High Fantasy that I’m thinking of? And while I don’t want genre expectations to frighten me off telling my own story, there’s also the fact that I could probably be spending my time better by exploring genres that I do actually want to play by the rules of – or at least play with the rules.

Or just say fuck the rules and expectations I’ma do what I want …

And then I don’t do it, and I think “surely the problem lies with me and not the idea”, and the cycle repeats.

Well, okay. If this isn’t the plan that works, is there a plan that will? Or is this a doomed enterprise for me? Am I just not cut out for telling these stories at all? Are they just shitty story ideas and I’m unwilling to admit it because they’re neat ideas that I’ve had for years and have a certain level of emotional investment in and that means that they have to amount to something or I’ve wasted so much time and energy on them for nothing?

Lasagne is not my favourite food anymore.

And I think, right now at least, I’m actually much more invested in revision than writing something new. Maybe that’s the writing plan that works for me. I’ve definitely felt like my time has been well-spent this week, where the most writing I’ve done is making revision notes and filling out this blog post. It’s been enough.

And maybe enough is enough.

I neeeeeeed to make that psychologist appointment.

21/04/2019

Revision

Every time Sunday rolls around, I feel very motivated to get a lot of work done on the revision notes for my co-writing project. Every time Sunday ends, I stop caring.

I’ll get there eventually. But I’m definitely missing the energy that I got out of writing the co-writing project last year, and there’s part of me that wants to get revision notes out of the way as fast as possible so that the writing can commence again, and that energy can be recaptured.

However …

Weekly Total

Writing: 4360

That’s all on this blog post right here. I wrote nothing of my own this week outside of revision notes, and that’s not writing that I’m counting.

And honestly, this has been one of the most fulfilling weeks I can remember. I did other things for the good of my mind body and soul this week, too: I did honest-to-god exercise, with weights and lunges and shit; I woke up earlier most days this week than I have in recent weeks past, and while I fell asleep almost immediately after waking up all of those times I still did wake up earlier than normal; I spent time with other human beings; I stopped beating myself up so much for not getting everything done that I randomly decided I should make a priority to get done …

And maybe most importantly, I upped the time that I spent on all of my manuscript revision note-taking work. I mean, that and the exercise. Maybe even mostly the exercise. You know what, whatever, I did both and they both contributed to my current state of satisfaction with the week that’s been, and that’s plenty fine by me.

I am super sick of waking up late, and that’s going to be next week’s mountain to climb, but for now I’m going to take a moment and just bask in the glow of a week well-spent. Maybe more than a moment.

And then I’m going to sit down on Monday, finish my revision notes for Mark and Jessie, and for the first time in … ever? I will be on my way to actually making a revision pass on this book that once meant everything to me, and see where we stand now.

Weekly Words 8-14/17/2018

08/07/18: 513

I have identified some Issues.

In my search for a story that feels like it’s “mine”, I often come up short. I have also had trouble identifying what it is, exactly, that is lacking. I have ideas that I like, but besides being anxious about possibly getting them wrong if I start writing them and then being somehow locked into that wrong direction because you can never change your mind about any decision you make ever, apparently … yes I need therapy why do you ask … I also just feel reluctant to invest in them. Like, they don’t feel worth my time. I can feel the failure before I even get started, and it’s not just low self-esteem. There is something in the premise itself that puts me off. And today, I feel like I’m one step closer to identifying what that something is.

This is due, in no small part, to going back to re-reading some of my older new stuff, ideas that I liked but didn’t stick with in terms of turning them into bigger projects – a sign, I think, that maybe a small, more focused project would have worked for me. One of them was Mark and Jessie, which I am still not done reading. I have finally gotten to the chapter where one of the major antagonists is introduced, and it’s taken so long to get to this point that it’s just frustrating to see it. But this is my perspective as the writer, not as a reader – I don’t think I really can have that perspective on my own work, but this stuck out to me as I was reading it. Why did it bother me so much? I can just shuffle that introduction around to have it come in earlier or something. It’s not a big deal if we’re talking revision, and with this project that is exactly what we’re talking.

The obvious answer was that, well, this is an important character who is meant to be pretty front-and-centre throughout the story, and they’re only showing up about at the start of the second third of this story. It feels like the focus is wrong. It feels like the pacing is wrong. It feels like this character actually doesn’t matter. Now to be fair, this is not a bad thing – this is a character I’m pretty ambivalent about the existence of to begin with, and not one I’m at all sure I will be keeping in subsequent versions of this book.

But what stuck with me was the fact that they were supposed to be relevant to the story all the way through, and instead here they are, making their first appearance – not even appearance; their first mention – 239 pages of the way through this 622 page book. And that’s when I realised what the problem was, and the problem I’ve been having with reading this manuscript since the beginning.

It means that I didn’t write what I set out to write.

I have been feeling really aimless with this read-through, not sure why I’m doing it, what I’m taking away from it – yeah, there are parts of it that I think are neat or interesting, but they’re not things that I actually necessarily think need to be in the story. They’re neat out of context, and that context has actually been lacking up to this point with my read-through. I haven’t had a context, a reason, to read this thing, except for the vague thought that, well, if you’re going to pick up an old project and try to revise it, it’s probably good to be somewhat familiar with it, and because it’s what I did with Tallulah when I was making revision notes.

But now, I have a context – I am reading this manuscript not to see “what works” or what I want to keep going forward. I am reading this manuscript to see where what I wrote diverges from what I wanted to write, from the vision that I had in mind.

And that changes everything, because now it’s about identifying my weaknesses as a big-picture writer, my ability to stick to my plans. The obvious issue with Mark and Jessie is that I had a vision, not a plan, and writing from a vision is writing from passion and conviction in the moment – it just so happened that this “moment” lasted for about a year and a half, judging by the “details” tab on the Word documents of the individual chapters. Mind you that’s slightly unreliable because the dates are screwed up by all of these files having been transferred from older computers and stuff – but it was at least a year, I’ll put it that way, I remember that much. A year-or-more-long passion project with no plan, no outline, no clearly-defined – or even vaguely-defined – plot-thread to follow, that has resulted in this chimeric monstrosity of a story that involves everything from fairytale creatures to genetically modified household pets with military application, and to be fair that doesn’t sound like a bad mash-up.

But it’s not what I was trying to write.

And that is the most disheartening thing about reading this manuscript: I know that it’s not what I wanted it to be – but it’s also proven to be the aspect of this project, as it currently stands, that has given me the most clarity and purpose to continuing this read-through. I’m not just reading it because I said I would, now: I have an agenda.

And it means I need to start taking better notes. I’m trying to find my story here, because while I know this isn’t what I wanted it to be, I also know that what I wanted was not a plan. It was not a robust enough foundation for me to begin writing from. I’m glad I wrote it anyway, don’t get  me wrong, but I wish I had identified that this was a weakness in my approach all those years ago …

Almost exactly 12 years ago, actually.

It’s a sign.

So sayeth the Ubermensch!

… anyway – the point is, while it’s not what I wanted, what I did want was not particularly well-define. I had a premise for the plot, which I still love, and I had a feeling. And I realised today that I need more for a story to feel like “mine”.

What this boils down to, for me, is that when I have my premise, the story and the characters and the world, all of these supposedly separate elements, have to feel like different aspects of the same whole for me. I used to want to write big books, long sagas; I used to start by planning to write X number of books, and then try to think up ideas to fill that quota. I can see now that this approach is leaking over into my more recent idea-generation process, where I’ll have what I call a “premise”, but it’s actually a setting, or a world-building feature, or something that is only one part of what, I now believe, a proper premise needs, which I then try to fill with the other features that this idea-seed did not come with – and it hasn’t been working. I realise that the reason I have been having issues coming up with ideas that feel like “mine” is because so many of the premises I am working with are not complete. So that is what I need to work on.

And also probably why the co-writing project has been going so well for the past almost-a-year, on top of all the other reasons it’s been going well. It’s a complete premise, and it fucking works. Also why Wolf Gang got written, which the other night I … realised? Seems like a long time coming, but yeah, I realised the other night that, fuck, I wrote that garbage zero draft, I put those ideas down in writing. I did that.

And I do want more of that feeling – only this time, with ideas I actually give a shit about.

So, on top of all of my other ambitions writing-wise, I am actually going to spend some time de-tangling my latest project, all of which have that quota-filling aspect to them, me trying to jam together new and old ideas to make something whole. Not a bad practice, on paper, but in practice it has not been helping me at all. I’ve blocked the progress of some really cool ideas that I’ve been really passionate about by doing that, and while it may be too late to salvage my momentum, I want to give it a try. I owe it to those ideas, and to myself, to give it a try.

10/17/18: 605

God I’ve been off these past couple of weeks, writing-wise.

I am just starting to realise how much shit I need to take care of this year – in fact, before the year is out – and I’m not going to lie, this and last week have suffered in terms of not just writing, but general life shit, as a result. I am losing focus on the things that I want to do and need to do; I am procrastinating and self-distracting to a very large degree; I am panicking, leaning on my back foot, excavating large portions of the sandbank so that I have multiple options for a head-hiding-spot – I’m not in a great space right now.

Which is fucking annoying, because on the other hand, I’m kind of excited by how much super-important shit I need to take care of. I’m a little bit hype about it, truth be told, which is strange and alien to me and perhaps that’s part of why I’m going so far off the rails. But I need to focus my efforts on those tasks. I need to think not of the tasks themselves, but how to do them, because if I think about the tasks themselves I’m going to freak out and not get any of it done.

And writing is not one of those things.

I was considering taking last week off, during the final sprint of the last round of marking, and while on the one hand I am kind of sad that I didn’t decided to do that, I am also glad that I have continued to force myself to continue writing every day. It does feel like I’ve fallen off the wagon, and I am disappointed in the level of commitment I am showing to writing – and other things – in general right now, but by the same token I have to acknowledge that, at the very least, in this week’s downward spiral of anti-productivity, I have still forced myself to write, and it got done. Not a lot, but it got done. And that’s a good thing, one that I can build on.

Which I really need to, because holy shit I have things to do. I’ve got a scene to finish for the co-writing project; I’ve got a psychologist to set up an appointment with; I’ve got morning walks to get back into the habit of because all of last month was, relatively speaking, a wash in that regard; I have writing projects to de-tangle and rationalise; I have Mark and Jessie to read and reflect upon with regards to my vision and passion for the project versus what I actually have written to work with; I have Youthline classes starting up again this week that will run from now through to November; I have asked my masters supervisor if I can have a chat with him about potential PhD topics; I have voice-developing exercises that I don’t want to do but have fantasies of making myself do for my own good; I have books to read about writing that I am really apprehensive about for some reason it feels like a big commitment; I have to figure out how to do self-care properly and without resorting to games and youtube all the time because it’s fine some of the time but gets really out of hand really easily; I have to figure out what the hell I’m going to do for money from December onwards …

Basically, I am going through my own personal Ragnarok right now, and I am not handling it as well as I would like to. But, at the same time, I do feel this weird, seemingly irrational excitement, and it’s not the challenge or anything like that; it’s the prospect of being able to give myself evidence of my ability to handle my shit.

The thing is, I feel like I can do it, so the fact that I am not doing it has been really contributing to how kind of unfocused and antsy and self-distracting I’ve been over the past few days. I think it’s a sign. I am craving this experience of being fucking competent at doing shit.

So I should give myself that experience.

And writing – I don’t want to think about it. I’m not giving up on it, but I’m just not going to worry about it. As I’ve said once or twice before: I can always write 1 word a day. I have in fact done that before. But this other stuff is just more important, and it’s as simple as that. I can write any time, but this stuff, not so much. It’s kind of a now or never thing. I would really love to be able to load up an older save-file of my life right about now, to stop things from getting this out of hand to begin with – but, time only moves one way, and like it or not we all move along with it. I’ll just have to try and use it to my advantage.

And the thing is, when everything else is going well, the writing ends up going well too. Without me having to think about it.

That is the plan for this week.

11/07/18: 451

12:07/18: 33

It’s always too late, goddammit.

But that’s fine. Learning things that you need to know too late – in this case, it’s just too late to put into practice for this week for writing. Writing is easy to make up for …

Or, in this case, not make up for, because this week I needed to be not writing, and I did not realise that until today. I needed to be reading.

And here’s the thing: I actually did a bit of writing, yesterday, that I have been wanting to make a start on for a while now, one of those new projects that I’m too anxious and self-conscious to make a start on because I don’t want to “get it wrong”. So there’s been some good stuff going on.

But what I realised tonight, sitting down and trying to make myself focus on writing, is that I wanted to read Mark and Jessie, not write, and all this week I have been agonising over when I would fit in my writing for the day and what I would write with it. I have said that I feel “aimless” with my writing, searching for an idea that feels like “mine” – but I’ve already got that project. It’s Mark and Jessie. And the issue with that is the fact that it’s already been written, so measuring my progress with the project with Weekly Words is … I mean, I can’t. End of story. Weekly Words is not set up for that.

And that’s okay, too.

What I realise now, too late to be ideal but definitely not too late to be useful, is that I should have addressed this issue way earlier, because it’s seriously not a big deal. All I had to do, honestly, is say that this week, I might not write at all, because I have this other important thing to focus on – which is still “writing”, in the sense that it is all in the service of getting to the end of a writing project. It’s just not putting words down on the page. I guess I could measure in terms of pages read or something – actually a very obvious solution – but it still doesn’t work for Weekly Words. Weekly Words is really here for me to have a way to motivate myself to power through writing, rather than keeping track of a writing project, which only really needs a consistent word-count schedule until the first draft is done. Once you move into the revision phase of things, words written per insert-time-measurement-here just doesn’t mean anything, unless you’re completely starting over from scratch or something – in which case it’s not part of the revision process anyway.

You get what I mean.

This week, I was very invested in my stories, but writing was not the best way for me to engage with them and follow through with that investment. But because I have this commitment to Weekly Words, I spent all of this week obsessed with fitting in writing so that I would be “onto it” and “responsible” and, of course, a “good writer”. This week, what has been an overwhelmingly positive and useful tool in my life turned into another way to facilitate one of my oldest bad writing habits: getting bogged down in guilt and negative self-talk, and judging my self-worth pretty much solely based on whether I did any writing that day.

I have completely lost perspective this week, in fact these past two weeks, where my writing is concerned, and it’s affected everything else.

But that’s fine.

Next week, while Weekly Words will continue as per normal, and while I still have a commitment to write every day, that daily writing commitment will be 1 word. No less, for sure, but no more either. If I do more then that then that’s fantastic and excellent and it’s not my priority right now. I’d like it to be. I’d like to be excited about writing right now. But, yeah, when I say I have other shit I need to do, in future I need to actually not just acknowledge that but act on it, manage my time around it. I need to get used to my own tells, I guess. Get those brain-hacks rolling.

Weekly Total: 1602

I wrote this week. I should have worried about it less, but I’m glad that I at least did it.

But next week, I want to be glad that I did what I needed to do, whether that involves any writing or not.