Reflection

I must admit, I'm a little surprised that for seven consecutive days I have made a post on this blog. On December 31st of last year I knew that I wanted to start a blog and make a commitment to post regularly but my track record with stuff like that is not good. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't say I'm a slacker (although I am currently living like one) but I don't take myself seriously enough to follow through with those sort of ideas. If something is for my benefit alone I tend to neglect it. On the other hand, when I'm given a task by someone else I work hard to make sure it gets done and done well. I am an extremely hard worker when employed by someone else. When working for myself I tend not to respect my employer and the feeling is mutual. After not too long at all I stop doing the work altogether.

A couple of months ago I decided to commit myself to writing something - a novel, some short stories, a short film, I wasn't specific about it. In retrospect, this lack of specificity was probably the problem; I think I work best in a more structured environment where I'm aiming towards a concrete goal. In any event, for about a week or so I sat down at my desk for a few hours a day and just wrote whatever came out. I surprised myself in that I had more ideas than I thought I did. Three or four short stories, a novel (or perhaps just a novella), a couple of short film ideas, and even a couple of lines of poetry found their way onto paper. That is, the beginnings of the short stories and novel found their way onto paper. After little more than a week of regular writing I just found myself making excuses not to do it. I never finished anything. It's all still there, incomplete, in a folder above my desk. I haven't looked at it since then.

Why did I stop writing? I honestly don't know. I have the time to do it, that's not the issue. I also seem to have some kind of desire to write or I wouldn't be where I am, trying (on occasion, at least) to do it. So what is it? What is so difficult about sitting at a desk, pen in hand (I prefer to write the old-fashioned way), scribbling ideas down on a notepad? At first, before I had my week of productivity, I used the excuse that I didn't have any ideas and that sitting at a desk with a blank piece of paper in front of me would be too painful to bear. Can't use that one anymore. I had anticipated the beginning being the hardest part and after weeks and months (read years) of avoiding it I was surprised to find it really wasn't that difficult. I had overcomplicated the process which can be reduced to this: you sit, pick up pen, place pen on paper, move pen over surface of paper to produce shapes known as letters which, when properly sequenced, result in words. Words form sentences, sentences form paragraphs and so on. It may sound like a gross oversimplification of the writing process but that's all it really is. That is, if you don't concern yourself with exactly what you're writing. At that point, however, I didn't really care what I was writing just so long as words were getting onto the page.

As the days went by I continued writing. When I became stuck writing one story I began writing another, and then another, revisiting my works in progress when I had some new ideas. Things were moving along nicely until I hit, in all my stories simultaneously, the point where I didn't know what was supposed to happen next. I had set the stories up without too much planning or forethought and had hit a wall. But instead of thinking about moving any or all of my stories forward, I started thinking about what I was doing in a more abstract sense. All that did was cause me to question what I was doing and whether I had the ability to do it. It didn't take me very long to decide that I didn't know what I was doing and I didn't have any ability to do it.

The only reason I'd been able to actually write anything at all during that time was that I'd somehow managed to temporarily disengage the fiercely self-critical part of my brain that had for so long convinced me that I would never be able to write anything that was even remotely good. Once I stalled, however, I lost all that momentum and reverted to the old, impossible to please, me. It wasn't that what I had written was bad - it wasn't great but it was by no means terrible (incidentally, I always try to remember what Hemingway said about first drafts always being... not very good. I think I might be paraphrasing but you get the idea) - but the more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that I had no business trying to be a writer, not only because I had nothing original or insightful to say but also because I had no literary ability. So I stopped writing. I didn't make a conscious choice to never write again but I did feel defeated.

A couple of months on, I'm not sure I feel that way anymore, at least not all the time. In a way, it was a valuable learning experience. I haven't lost anything (I didn't burn what I wrote) except for a couple of months worth of potential writing time. The way I figure it - and I'm talking about right now, I may not feel this way tomorrow morning - suppose I am the world's worst writer. Suppose I'm some hack who couldn't even get a job storylining on the worst of the worst reality TV show. So what? Even if that's the case, why should that stop me from writing if that's what I think I want to do? Even if the end result of my writing is a derivative and cliched piece of garbage, what's the harm? What else would I have done with my time? Waste hours absorbing daytime TV? Probably. I have been doing a lot of that lately. I think writing a bad novel would have been a far better use of my time.

I'm lucky that I've now learned that lesson (although it seems rather obvious in hindsight) and that I'm at least aware of how I undermine myself with unfounded criticism and negativity. Up to this point I was aware of it but didn't regard it as unfounded. If I make the effort to be conscious of those type of thoughts in the future I might be able to stop myself from giving up so easily. For now, posting on this blog is the only writing I am committing myself to doing and, one week in, I commend myself for actually making it this far. For the first time in a while I feel like I've achieved something, albeit something small. I hope I can keep it up because I think that so far it's been good for me.