Rough Writing

Poetic title? check! Good content? not really sure, you judge.

When I sit down to right I play a game with my mind. I think I have to have eaten something energizing, work can’t have been too hard on my brain, my children have to have gone to bed easily. My hearing can’t be acting up. I need energy. A thousand upon thousand things I feel I have to check off before I can start writing. I sit and flip back and forth between tabs on my browser and get up and go do small chores because I just can’t write till I’ve done x y or z chore. I think I figured out what contributes to that behavior and how I might be able to get pass it. Once you realize what is stopping you from doing what you want you have two choices. Remove the obstacle or let go of what you want.

When I solve a technical problem, or any problem at all really, I like to mull it over in my mind a great deal then maybe combine that mulling with some solid white boarding or sketching in my notepad I carry everywhere and I’m a happy camper. I like to think everything through before I choose a course of action. This is not helpful for writing short rough pieces. I get caught up with not wanting to box the story into a specific path. This is why I spun on my first ‘novel’ for years. I have this massively intricate world and systems with back stories, motivations, histories of different factions etc. but very very little actual actual writing that shares the actual story of the main characters. When I finally sat down with my pen to write my epic sci-fi I stumbled really hard to actually tell a story. I was so frustrated with how poor my writing was I re-wrote the first three chapters too many times. Sound familiar? So tonight I found myself spinning again. Why will Character A do x? What about the political environment, the technology, the religions? Do they make sense, what is the story arc, what is going to happen 5 chapters from now. Stop. Doing. That. Brain.

So, I learned something tonight about myself. When I’ve sat down to write the past few times I hadn’t realized I’d fallen back into that trap. I didn’t even realize I’d been in that trap before till now. I think that is the power behind doing, even if what you do isn’t the greatest you’ll find the path to your greatest by doing something now because you have to learn how to get there. You don’t just ‘know’ and there is never a ‘perfect’ time to write like the present.