377 days or Blog #2 where I first talk about writing
Uh, yeah… so I’ve managed to get myself to 10:54 without
starting a blog. Well, I just started
it.
There was supposed to be an hour of designated writing… but
you know, sometimes a gathering of writers ends up wandering into hours of
talking… and writing falls by the by.
All of this is kind of appropriate? Because I intend today’s post to be about
writing ambition for the 377 days. Well,
aside from the writing of the next 377 376 days.
I gave myself a deadline.
August 10th – which for those of you new to the world of
Jessie is the day I turn 39. Or we can
just say birthday. Birthdays are actually
good writing deadlines to me. It’s kind
of an incentive to feel like I’ve accomplished something in the year in the
life that is drawing to a close. It kind
of worked last year. But it really
worked in 2009 when I had a pretty decent third draft of the novel I ended up
publishing.
I actually spent those talking with writers hours tonight
touching on that novel. So it had to do
with writing. Even though I feel like
that chapter is complete. We were
discussing marketing and how we promote our books.
I’m really bad at promoting my published book. I’m kind of done with it. Maybe that’s the consequence of jumping on
the trendy vampire bandwagon. Or maybe
(pun sort of intended) it’s because I cut my teeth on it and I now find my
efforts diverted to other interests.
Or I’m making excuses.
Not really about marketing a book that still has a special
place in my heart. About not devoting
myself to the next one. Birthday or not.
So this play I fell in love with yesterday… I realize it has
something to it that I’m trying to put in my book. A sweetness.
But not the sweetness of romance that makes you want to vomit. The kind that is so, yeah, this is how life
is. Without a whole lot of dressing and
pretentious overthetop impossibility.
But I can’t get my head there in writing the scenes I need to
write. I can get my head there imagining
how I would block… or find music to force the mood of the scene on a stage.
I have often felt that writing is sacrificed to the creative
energies of theater and vice versa. I
mean it is no coincidence that I gave up theater in October 2008 and starting
writing that novel in November. And yet…
are they really mutually exclusive? Is
it not possible that I could use this year to come to find a way to channel
those creative energies to benefit both forms of art?
This wasn’t the intention for this blog. I wanted to write
and purge myself of that blockage that keeps me from writing to meet the
deadline eleven days from now. And yet I
find a shiny distraction in this other pondering. Why is that?
What is my problem with finishing this draft?
I do write well under pressure. The best college paper I ever wrote (a
reflective piece of Western European literature told through the perspective of
Horatio going back to Wittenberg with PTSD) was 10 o’clock at night the night
before it was due. So maybe I’m waiting
until 10 o’clock on August 9th to get around to filling in those
holes so when I ship the manuscript off to beta readers I can be guaranteed its
fantastic success?
Yeah that’s it.
No.
It’s not.
I’m a Leo. I
procrastinate. A lot. Sometimes it yields brilliance. Mostly, it’s just laziness.
Besides, this book scares me. It scares me because it could be good. It could suck. It’s heavy.
It’s got a lot of truth in it. A
lot that is far away from me. But a lot
closer than vampires.
I’m stuck because I don’t know how to resolve the question
of my contemporary narrator. I think that
is because I have a very similar question for myself. Where do we go from here? But… does there have to be a neat and tidy
resolution?
No.
At least not at 11:15pm.
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