Are We There Yet?

So I guess these happen on Saturday now? And to be honest, the closer I get to the start of the semester, the more I think I should transition it to Sundays, so be on the look out for that.

Other than that, there isn’t a whole lot of exciting news or relatable anecdotes. Things have been a bit of a roller coaster latterly, and Dream Story is still very much in the front of my mind. I just haven’t been comfortable sitting down and working on it. It’s been frustrating, because I have been planning the story for such a long time, I feel like I haven’t even been writing.

It’s one of the bad habits I have. I’ll do an outline. That outline will need a revision. I’m too ambitious with my revision. It will need a second one to tone it down. The second revision becomes a mess and I get unmotivated. Maybe I’ll try to make a third, but most of the time I peter out and that’s the end of it. Again, I feel unmotivated, which leads to no accomplishments, which leads to being unmotivated.

It’s a vicious cycle, I tell you.

I’m trying to keep in mind that the whole reason I started writing this story was to get a win under my belt. To show myself that I can, indeed, finish one self-contained story. And technically, I have that somewhere in these outlines. It’s not a script yet, which means I can’t storyboard it, which means I can’t format it into a comic book-style script. But, It is a completed story. Somewhere in there.

The pressure is on now, since I have all of a week to hit my own deadline, August 12^th. This is the day I want to be done with a script for the story. Something I can show people. I have to concede, I don’t believe I’ll be hitting that deadline the way I want to. Maybe, if I push myself really hard, I can get a first draft done. But it won’t be worth showing anyone at that point. It most undoubtedly will need a revision. So now I have to look at the way I’m feeling about this…

Is it a failure, or do I readjust?

Every time I write a blog for this, it’s a statement that I’m recommitting myself to the project. I’m telling not just the world, but myself, that this is something I’m going to get done. It’s accountability. And I can’t tell you how often I daydream about quitting the whole thing and just doing something else. It’s an issue with me, I know. And blogs will rarely get the inspirational return one hopes for to get the motivation to keep going. So I have to be self-accountable and self-motivated, and the truth is, it’s a lot of work. And it makes me miserable.

And you know what? I think in a certain way, that’s perfectly okay.

It’s not all the time I feel this way (although lately, it feels that way). Planning out a story is hard work. It takes time. It gets emotional. The process is messy. It’s a shit-storm. I beat myself up over it. I feel worthless because I can’t accomplish anything, and I can’t accomplish anything because I feel worthless. And this goes on and on, back and forth for days or even weeks at a time. My own inferiority complex prevents me from charging full speed.

But it doesn’t cause me to stop.

Okay, so maybe the process isn’t as daunting and emotionally challenging for you as it is for me. But I have no doubt that as a writer, you have (or you will) felt this way. The cliché term, “you’re your own worst critic,” is cliché because it’s true. Self-confidence was not something that was promised to us. But they are a completely normal part of the human condition.

And you know what else is?

Getting the hell over it. Yes it’s okay to fall down into your own self-pitying misery when things don’t seem to be going the way you’d hope. Just as long as you get the fuck back up. It doesn’t matter how often it happens, or how long it lasts, or that you don’t want to hear it. The only successful writer is one that pushes past that shit to get to the finish line. Which is what I have to do this week. I have to push through the human condition to accomplish my goals.

So I’m going to do that this week. Because I want to be successful. I want to feel accomplished. I want to get back up.

So like I said, I tried to redo the outline one last time, and it came out a clusterfuck. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I just presented the whole thing to my writer’s group as a collection of concepts. My writer’s group is familiar with the introduction of the story, which I believe they’ve heard three or four different versions of it. But I never went about telling them what the whole story was about from beginning to end.

It was enlightening to get some outside opinions on the events in the story. But when it was all said and done, nothing had really been fixed. None of the details had really popped into place in my mind. Which was disappointing. But I was reminded of one thing. I don’t have to write this thing in a linear fashion. I can start with some of the most vivid scenes in my head, bounce around, sort of “sketch” some scenes and see how I feel about them. If anything else, at least I’ll be writing instead of planning. So for the next week, I’m going to do that and see what happens.

Oh, and I'm pushing that deadline out to the day before school starts: August 20th. Because I can do that.