Happy New Year! Um...

Okay, so I've been trying to convince myself to write a new year's post for a while now (about a month and 8 days!), but I kept putting it off. Because it was a pitiful year for me. Truly, gut-wrenchingly terrible. I'm pretty sure at this point my writing skills have atrophied into a twisted ball of lols and emoticons. (The majority of the writing I do consists of gchats with my boyfriend and the occasional tweet or facebook update.)

For a concrete measure of how little I got done, in the entire year of 2011, I wrote 24,045 words (according to my spreadsheet). Which I guess is better than nothing, although one could argue that it effectively is nothing, given that none of those 24k words have gone to a project that I think has real potential.

Reading through last year's wrap-up is painful. 2010 ended on such a great note. I was sending out a few queries in January 2011! I had novel ideas galore! I was going to have SO much more time! My goal was 180,000 words! And yet all that time came to nothing. I can blame it on my divorce, or stress at work trying to get through my training pipeline at the front of the group, or the happier distractions of a new relationship, but the truth of it is that I just lost the will to write. Not the desire to write, but the will.

So: no lofty goals for 2012. My only writing goal for this year is to write. And that is, hopefully, one that I can keep.

Why I Write

Blog posts have been scarce of late, but not as scarce as words on the page. It seems like there is a mental dam that is blocking any attempt at writing. I've tried to bust it, I've tried to not care about it, but it doesn't seem to work. I thought getting some betas for my close-to-done work would help, but I haven't heard back from them yet and it feels like a thin excuse to not be working on something else. (And although I am impatient to hear back, I am grateful that I've found people to read it at all and, as long as I haven't heard from them, I can assume they have nothing but good things to say!)

So why am I bothering, then? It isn't likely I'll ever make a living as an author. There are a thousand other, easier things I can do with my free time. I won't change the world or probably even a single person.

But today reminded me. I woke up and wasn't in the mood to get up (ah, weekends!), so I popped open the book I was reading (The Magician King by Lev Grossman) and proceeded to finish the book. It took over 3 hours, but the time flew by. It hardly seemed to matter. I didn't check my phone once to see if my ex had messaged me. I didn't feel the need to look at my facebook or Twitter or the message board I frequent. I was totally immersed, and after the last click (yes, I am a devout Kindle user) I just lay there staring at the ceiling. I felt too good to move. I had that precious feeling of being ensconced in another place, the trivialities and problems of my life irrelevant. I love that feeling. I used to get it all the time, when I had both more time to read and less ability to distinguish shoddy writing. It is rarer these days, but just as awesome as it used to be.

And I want to give people that feeling. I want people to close the cover on one of my books and sigh, and sit there or lay there for just a few moments. I want them to feel my work linger on even when the cover is closed (or the screen is turned off). I want them to shed a tear or two for the troubles of my characters. I want to immerse them in my worlds and help them cope with their own.

I don't know if I'll ever get to that point. It may be entirely out of my reach. But dammit, I am going to keep trying!

More Disappointment

So much for knuckling down. I had a small burst of productivity (2 days) and then nothing.In my defense, I've had some personal issues that have totally derailed my attention for anything. Not to get into to too much detail--this is my writing blog, after all--but my boyfriend broke up with me for legitimate reasons outside our control. We still both have strong feelings for each other and it has been quite the struggle to get myself to even focus on work, so writing was basically out of the question. I hate to use the "tortured artist" stereotype, but isn't it true that so many of us seem to feel things so strongly? I sure do, anyway.

But I am really determined to move on with my life, including my writing, so here I am promising more writing yet again. This time, however, I have a better plan than "just force it," which never works for me. I realized it was really sapping my creative energy to try to come up with new story ideas (I suck at plotting, I confess), make an outline, and then get 10k or 2k words into a draft and fizzle out.

So I decided I need to focus on the work I have that is complete and, hopefully, has publishable potential. Time to bare my poor little writer's ego to some barbs. I solicited some betas from an online forum I frequent, and the good folks there were quick to help me out. Now I have 3 different people currently reading it, and I am looking forward to getting their feedback and wrestling with the third draft.

I really think that after this draft I can seriously start shopping this one. I've put out a few feelers already, but it was more to force myself out of my comfort zone and get more familiar with the process than any real idea that it was ready. (Perhaps a poor idea on my part, as it has narrowed my submission options now, but it was made and done.)

I make no promises, since I break them so easily when it comes to writing goals, but I feel good about re-visiting Novel 1 instead of trying to come up with another one at the moment.

Knuckling Down

I have been avoiding posting for the mere fact that I am embarrassed. Embarrassed at how little I have been able to accomplish. Ashamed of my lack of creativity and drive. Seriously considering never writing again.

Yes, I wrote that right. Over the past few months I have contemplated giving up something I have been working towards for literally as long as I can remember.

Thankfully, the muse has prevailed! Or rather, she might.

I am through my writer's block enough to the point that I think I can force myself to write. That sounds unpleasant, but it is infinitely better than the crippling writer's block where I can't even think about doing that!

So starting today (soon!), my "writing hour" is at 6 PM. I will turn off my internet, shut the door to my office, and pull up a word document. I haven't finished plotting out the piece I want to start, but that's okay. Start with a scene. Any scene. Anything at all. For an hour. 5 times a week at least.

Ready, set, go!

Little Steps

I am trying to chip away at this mean old case of writer's block I've got going on. It's just not feasible to say "Alright, I'm powering through and going to write X number of words every day!" Because my mind shuts down, I don't write anything, and every passing day I get more and more discouraged.

So for now I'm just trying to think about writing every day. This sounds incredibly lame--okay, it is incredibly lame. But it's working! I've been pondering a new world for just about 5 minutes every day for the past week, and I'm finally feeling the beginnings of the stirrings of inspiration way in the back of my mind.

Huzzah!

Now I am printing out a beat sheet and going to start a skeleton plot structure. That's all. Not going to pressure myself into starting any writing, or any real character creation or in-depth world building. Just a basic plot, and we'll see what comes after that.

It's not much, but I'll take anything at this point.

An Unexpected Inverse Relationship

Obviously I have been struggling a lot with my writing lately. Writer's block is painful for a whole host of reasons. I think the worst is the doubts that creep in--why am I doing this? Can I do this? Why should I do this if I am going months without writing? But at the same time, not writing sucks. I want to be writing, even when I am having strong aversions to actually writing.

So the natural thing to do is try to examine the root cause of the writer's block. In my case, this is something that comes and goes without rhyme or reason. In this instance I can probably pin it down to the upheaval of my personal life--moving across the country, starting a new job, getting divorced, struggling to define what I really want in life. But that's not very helpful as I can't exactly change any of those things. So I find myself pondering a connection that I have previously noted on many occasions.

The more I exercise, the less I write.

It makes no sense. It's not an issue of time management. For the past couple months I've had nothing but time, to the point where I manage to spend a surprising amount of time lying on the couch staring at the wall. So if I'm not sacrificing my writing time to work out, why do the two affect each other so much?

I can only postulate that they both somehow serve a similar purpose for me mentally. When you're out on a 4 mile run, there is plenty of time to think. To relax, let your stress melt away. And then you don't need to pour your stress into a fantastical adventure in far off lands. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I first noticed this trend in college and have seen it play out many times before.

In fact, I've been thinking about writing this post for 2 weeks, and I am sitting here finally writing it only after skipping my work out yesterday and not having worked out since Thursday. (A connection I didn't even notice until I had already started writing the post.)

So what to do about it? I love to exercise. I want to stay healthy, and I really enjoy it. But I love to write. I want to leave my mark on the world in the form of the written word.

I wish I had an answer.

May 2011 Wrap-Up

I don't even know if it is worth it to post a monthly recap. It can be summed up in this: nothing.

I would post something optimistic about June, but my heart wouldn't be in it. At this point, I just hope I can get any words.

Words written: 988.

Yup. Less than 1k words in an entire month during which I wasn't even working. I fail. I feel really pessimistic about my writing future right now.