I'm Back... Sorta

Despite the balloony-headedness of this stage of my cold, I decided to do some minimal writing today, just to break the annoying tedium of Netflix, tissues and the layers of Vaseline it takes to salvage the results from rubbing these tree-shreddings against my face all day.

So why not get to Justina Ireland's Pep Talk from our NaNo mail today?

lol Writing sucks... Already my kind of pep talk! Like many people, after I get over the butthurt of a harsh reality, what motivates me is often the begrudging acceptance that despite how much certain processes can suck, I'm going to do it anyway. And for the sheer fact that I can't stand wondering what something would be like when I could be trying to find out if it can be done.

The message is pretty simple here. You're probably not going to magically feel better at writing, nor will it become a task that gets easier, but you're going to come back as long as the drive remains.

People might tell you that writer's block is just laziness, fear, an excuse to seek attention, lack of ideas (or the confidence to realize them)... Whatever. I've tried to explore what 'writer's block' is and it's mostly a purely mental place and not one that people can easily suss out for you. In most cases, writing sucks because it's not a magic formula you're always eager to chase, that the words sometimes just aren't there when you have the time for them, or in abundance at the worst possible places (afk, yo!).

No one can tell you that you'll finish every story or book or even want to. Everyone is either writing a book, has a book inside them, or lost their way to doing either. Some people will treat it like it's some luxury that will fill in the tedium of retirement (where they imagine it's not work and more along the lines of sipping mai-tais on some beach while typing away on their tablets-- poof! masterpiece!).

Speak to anyone who's actually doing it. What it takes to reach 5K. 10K. 25K. Every few thousand words, it can even be more difficult not less. Shouldn't it be easier the more you establish? Well, no. Some people imagine that they can first draft their way to a great book then throw it into their spell-checker, but the reality is, we often find our best ideas after some retrospect. The cutting room floor isn't just for film-- we also end up throwing around chunks of text with some really amazing insights that we either have to find the perfect place for or come to terms with the fact that we'll have to save a gem for the next story because this just isn't where it goes.

I did plenty of 2-5K essays for college. The structure that instructors look for may seem strict and at times very boring. I was equally guilty of being wordy as hell just to stretch those word counts as far as they would go. I dealt with jaded instructors that took out their literary pet peeves on me (Gods forbid because I used a John Lennon quote one instructor had seen used many times before and always inappropriately-- made for a good debate though on how artists don't expect their lyrics to mean the same thing to everyone and they can still be used 'appropriately' if the words fit the sentiment.) One absolutely flipped their shit if you used the word 'thing', no matter how much it fit the abstract (again, I defended that you don't always want to take away from the more important subjects by using more powerful words for the insignificant).

Let's just say I was not let down by what these challenges did for my writing. I ended up finding a middle ground with all of my teachers, and namely because I got the message early on that as much as an artist must learn to be adaptable, they should also speak up when they want to stand by a choice. I just as often relented where my argument wasn't strong enough-- I reduced color choices or simplified sentences, all in the name of seeing their point of view as well. There wasn't really a 'better' choice, just the attempt to see if I could make it work well for me. 

One teacher asked me why I used the same font on all of my storyboards for a brand design. Even though I varied the color and mood choices of my mood boards, I used the same font repeatedly rather than playing with different ones. I explained that I created the challenge that the client might have insisted on the font in their logo (since we did lock in our brand logos in a previous lesson anyway) and would want to see how well it played into the different images their brand might want to represent. It would give them the confidence to use it more diversely if I could display its versatility. I did however take his suggestion to only use a border I had made on the title pages since I did agree that they seemed to limit the visual of the brand content.

Realizing that balloony-head is making blogging more distracting than usual, I will loop back around and say this absolutely applies to writing as well. Writing IS a lot of mental gymnastics. Even if writing is all you do (or want to do) creatively, you are still wrapping your head around influences (some people are visual or rely on moods from music and so on), trying to carve out an effective story from the cinematic explosion or burgeoning knowledge of a more complex series of ideas. Even simple stories often need more than a light hand. I certainly know writers that whip through typing, yet these are also usually linear and simplistic, what you might call quick and easy reads. Even then, it's still a deceptive title. I'm a fast typist, yet at my fastest pace, 1K/hr is about the best you can expect from me. If I'm typing my absolute fastest creatively, then a standard novel is at LEAST 90 hours of work. In most scenarios, when you throw in planning, editing and finalizing, it's easily 4 times that. With the 200K+ tomes I've committed to these days, it's no wonder that I'm going on nine months of working on my latest book and it's still in drafting/editing stages. Even though I work very efficiently, these aren't stories I want to put out there without being confident in what they are. It takes every bit of time I give to it, no more, no less.

Soooooo, if writing sucks, you're doing it right. Nothing is won without it glaring you in the face. Repeatedly. Until it borders on harassment. I mean, you REALLY have to hate it to the point where you're coming back like a kicked dog. It's not always going to be work. It doesn't reach a point where the nostalgia of being fun is ever a distant thing, a high you will never reach again. You'll always have those revisit, the whimsy of your first time even. And yes, even the awkwardness of it. You'll sit down and forget what words are, wonder if you've lost your mojo, question your sanity. 

And once you get over the highs and lows, you'll remember it doesn't matter all that much. That neither is really all that necessary. You're not going to be the same person every time you sit down, in the same moods with the same confidence. That's the scary and wonderful thing about those introspective spaces. You intimately get to know every uncomfortable and glorious part of yourself. And, if you're lucky, even lose yourself and simply expand into the possibilities that await.