Writing has been going horribly lately. For some reason, I have the motivation but lack the drive. Does that make sense? Like, I’m always THINKING about writing and love the idea of finishing, but when it comes to actually putting words on the page, I just shit my pants.
I think there are a few things to blame for that:
- I’ve been working a lot this month. And every hour spent physically working necessarily takes away from the little time I’m already able to budget for writing.
- Work has been stressing me out more than usual this month. Surprise, surprise, I’ve learned that when I’m stressed, it’s hard to be creative.
- I’ve been planning a massive scene. Not in length, but in significance. There are some scenes that I can just write from my head, and they turn out fine, but this is not one of those scenes. And to be clear, I’m only writing rough drafts right now, and I don’t expect everything from a rough draft to carry over one-to-one into a final version. But this is one of those scenes that kind of has to be nailed down on the first go, so there’s been a lot of pressure to get it right. Just choreographing and planning it has taken a lot of world-building energy.
As far as solving those problems goes, I think the key to number one is just to push through. I think I’m gonna try to do a better job of making sure I set aside time that is dedicated to writing and make that time nonnegotiable.
For a while, I was doing a really good job of writing from 3:45 AM to 4:30 AM, from 7 AM to 9 AM, and then again from 7 PM to 8 PM. What’s been happening is that I’ll snooze my alarm too many times, or I’ll start working early when I don’t necessarily have to, which cuts into my 7 AM to 9 AM writing time, or I’ll just be too tired when I get back home.
I think the key to doing anything great is sacrifice and doing hard shit. It is what it is.
I can’t tell you the solution to the second problem just yet. Let’s just say my kitchen always smells because I’m always cooking.
As far as the third problem goes, the great news is that the scene is all planned and ready to be written right now. It’s 7:48 PM on a Saturday night, and I’m literally using voice-to-text to write all of this, but the goal is to get this scene written tomorrow morning.
I think one of the hardest things that’s been really messing with me lately is that I literally gave up drumming so I could put more time into writing. Drumming is a hobby I picked up later in life, and I’m absolutely passionate about it, but writing is a calling.
However, I’m not doing any writing, and if I drum, I feel like I should be writing. So I’m in this weird place.
Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how to work drumming back into my busy schedule without sacrificing writing. I haven’t quite figured that part out yet, but it’s definitely been on my mind, so I thought I’d share.