It's strange how frightened I can be of writing at all. As a professional writer who has proclaimed myself as a writer since 6th grade, one would think that writing comes to me very easily. However, writing has actually continually become more stressful and dare I say more difficult as I've aged and become more experienced.
I'd like to think that it's because I expect more. Being an editor for so long made me ever mindful and critical of the final product. Admittedly, I often worry so much about writing something perfect that I wind up not writing anything at all (at least when the writing isn't work-driven--the threat of not meeting deadlines when I'm being paid to write drives me past the stress and uncertainty).
Then perhaps that's what I need to do. Somehow, I need to set up blogging and working on writing projects (like the novel I'm working on) as work. I did that when I submitted my children's book to all of the publishers, and was able to get it done, and perhaps I need to trick myself in the same manner with fiction writing.
4 comments:
I know the feeling. I expect way too much from myself as well. I stopped calling myself a writer because I haven't published (creatively) in years. I've often thought of using my blog to do creative exercises... timed exercises, etc. Let me know if you're interested, we could come up with fun challenges, like the exercises you do in writing classes, and post them. Knowing fun stuff is "due" by a certain day might give us the gumption. You can e-mail me at sophiepine@gmail.com
p.s. I love your blogs new look!
I think that's a great idea! Should we create a new blog to post the writing, or keep it to our respective blogs?
You may want to check out scriptfrenzy.org for some controlled chaos and peer pressure. (I'm not doing it this year, but I still make my students do write-o-rama. And I'm doing a different writing project while my Juniors do their "Independent Research Project"). I decided to NOT blog as my writing thing, because the dates-when-posted thing wasn't working for me, so I'm exploring wikis instead (for my "professional persona" anyway).
Best prompts (They don't make you dig into your childhood, just play with words) I find are at http://dragonwritingprompts.blogsome.com/ -- my favorite are the alphabet ones.)
But if you're doing timed writing or other challenges, keep me in the loop, too!
i feel ya on this one! I'm not a "writer" but an artist and have put SO much pressure on myself to sell, that i've gone on vacation! I'm taking a break from trying to find my million $ idea and ONLY doing art/jewelry for myself and my daughter... It feels AWESOME! The more I was trying the more I was failing and taking the fun out of creating... I think a lot of us creative types suffer with this! Good luck to you!!
~cm
Post a Comment