Tags
comparing to others, fear, goals, imagination, joy, living without goals, panic, stress, thoughts, writing
So I recently posted about getting into better habits. My brain immediately screamed…
SET DAILY GOALS!
MAKE A SCHEDULE!
PLAN YOUR LIFE!
FOCUS!
Wait… NO! Are you kidding, brain? We’ve tried this before. Do you want me to end up completely bonkers?
But… there are people, you’ve seen the posts on Twitter about goals to write 2K words a day. You’ve seen the people who write 5K (even 10K) words a day! You see all the people out there burning through their ms with passion, with gusto, with fabulous speed and brilliance! You’ve seen the people who have a schedule and get up at strange hours like 5am (seriously though I don’t think that time exists) and write words! Don’t you want to be like them?
Well…
Don’t you want to push past this fear you have of new words and write all the things you have in your head?
Well…
PLAN! SCHEDULE! GOALS!
(I do realize I had a conversation with myself right here, so thank you for attending Kathy-Talks-To-Herself Theater… showtimes vary, but happen everyday.)
*ahem* *straightens T-shirt*
I admire everyone with word count goals. I admire the writers who can get up early and add words. I have been falling into the void of LOOK-AT-THAT-PERSON-THEY-ARE-BETTER-THAN-ME-I-MUST-BE-FAILING. This is dangerous ground.
If I tell myself that I must write so many words a day… I panic.
If I make a schedule and something happens to derail it… I panic.
If I plan my life… I panic.
Believe me. No one wants that.
Relax, me! Things will work out. I will get back to writing and do my thing and all will be well. For some reason my personality does not allow plans or goals. I put extra stress on myself (perhaps a bit of that darn perfectionist) and get nothing done.
This ms is going so slow. I am having issues with the put butt in chair and write action. This bothers me! Why? Why can’t I do this? I like… heck, I love this writing thing!
BAH!
When I sat, stopped yelling at myself, and looked at the problem, I found an answer. I haven’t lived in my worlds long enough. I haven’t had lengthy conversations with my characters (old and new). This Darkness thing… there’s history it hasn’t revealed to me yet. There’s characters I need to meet, and worlds I need to explore. So I’m going back to brainstorming, writing all the ideas, creating a calendar, maybe sketching, and living in the worlds of my imagination.
My imagination is a happy place, even if it does contain a bit of creepiness. I will find my joy there. And when those good feelings fill me, I’ll write it all down in a spectacularly rough and crappy first draft. Just as it should be.
Yes, thank you, Hogwarts! They know brilliance happens in revisions.
But no daily goals. I’ll get done what I get done without stress.
Life is too short to live it in a spiky bubble of YOU MUST, at least for me. No plans. No goals. No self-imposed schedule. Just me and what I do, when I do it.
