BIAM Groundwork: Dedication to Writing

These questions appear on pages 22-23 in Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s Book in a Month. For those who have read the book or are going through your own BIAM, you may be saying “Uhmmm, Mo? There’s a few questions BEFORE these that you should be answering…”

Perhaps you’re right and I should invest in the time to answer them fully in writing. I basically considered them, considered my thoughts and came up with an internal answer to those questions that seemed like more than enough contemplation to feel satisfied with the results. Perhaps this approach is cavalier and I will regret my decision to not place ink to paper (or digital text to digital whitespace) later, but for now, those questions aren’t really relevant to my commitment to completing this manuscript specifically or my commitment to writing in general.

1. Why do you want to write?

Amazingly, this question wasn’t as easy to answer as I thought it would be at first glance. At least not in the way I want it to be. It’s easy to come up with answers such as “to get on the NYT Bestseller List,” or “to make lots of money”… but those represent answers more akin to questions about pipe dreams. Writing solely for an expected result (an exaggerated and unrealistic result, at that) becomes an impediment to ever achieving the amount of dedication required to turn those pipe dreams into actual realistic goals. Is it possible to achieve these results? Absolutely. But it doesn’t come overnight and there has to be a reason deeper than a pipe dream to keep you coming back again and again and again when you don’t get those results immediately… or ever.

I actually had to think long and hard about my answer to this question. To my mind, the answer to this question should have just popped out in an instant, so I was surprised to find that I couldn’t get past “I want to write because…” Because what? What could possibly make me subject myself to this time and time again? Was it just the pipe dreams? Was it the promise of fame and fortune? It didn’t feel like it. Could I have been wrong all this time?

When the answer finally came to me, it seemed too simple and mundane. I felt stupid and embarrassed for spending almost an hour with pen in hand trying to dig deep within myself to find the core reason behind my desire to write. This can’t really be The Answer, I told myself. There has to be more. But the truth is the truth, and my truth is this:

I like writing.

Literally, that’s it. I like writing… everything about it, in fact. I like words. I like finding the perfect word to convey an idea. I like finding out where words came from.¹ I like the invisible, yet omnipresent way that rules and conventions govern how those words are used.² I like the whole process of turning the inherent chaos of a brainstorm into something organized and easily understood by others. I like having the freedom to take the time to choose and edit my words carefully when conveying my thoughts, feelings and ideas – there is no backspace, cut/paste, or delete in verbal conversation, which is why I don’t actually like to talk very much.³

Basically, writing is joy for me. Through writing, I’m able to order my scattered thoughts, examine my feelings (something I’m actually really bad at doing), and explore my imagination. It’s a relaxing activity for me, even when the project I’m writing is stressful.

2. Why do you have to write?

Honestly, with all the pondering and soul-searching that went into #1, I was a little afraid that I would find myself running into the same problem with this question. Not so. This question was amazingly easy for me to answer.

I HAVE to write. There are, at any given moment, 3-4 stories within me begging to get out… some of them more loudly than others. It sounds vague, I know, but the stories themselves end up actually effecting me in my daily life when I let them sit and fester inside my head for too long. In fact, the longer they stay in my head, the harder it is for me to accomplish or move on to anything else in my life. The stories become my reality, and while deep down, I know they’re just stories, it becomes difficult to separate my Self from my stories when they only exist in my head. Once the story is out – even if it’s just a rough draft that needs copious rewrites to have a finished product – I feel like I can get back to the business of being me.

There’s a part of Jon Krakauer’s book Into Thin Air where he is descending the summit of Everest and he realizes that he is running short on oxygen. He hits a “roadblock” of people climbing the Hillary Step and is forced to wait patiently for them to make their way up before he can make his way down. He needs to extend what little oxygen he has so that he can safely descend to the spot where he will be able to swap his empty cannister for a full one. After asking one of his fellow climbers to adjust his tank to let out the oxygen at a slower rate, he is surprised to find that he is suddenly feeling fabulous. He’s no longer completely dog tired. There’s a new spring in his step. His thinking is amazingly clearer. The reason he felt better is because his airflow was increased instead of decreased.

While I have never knowingly asked someone to decrease my airflow (literally or figuratively), and I know nothing of what it’s like to try to survive in a place hell bent on killing you, I know the feeling you get when you finally get the sudden rush of air that you didn’t even realize you needed. It’s the feeling I have every time I finish a story. Sure, I go along thinking that I’m doing pretty well. Things are good – why shouldn’t they be? I feel like I’m doing just fine.

And then, I finish a story and it’s like I’m finally able to breathe again. There’s a clarity to my thoughts that surprises me and allows me to finally see that “doing just fine” was really a weariness that I had become so well-adapted to that I mistook it for normal. I never realize the physical burden a story puts on me until it’s not there anymore. I have yet to find a way other than writing to achieve that feeling of “letting the air in.”

3. How will your life be different after you finish this manuscript? What will be different?

Two words – everything and nothing. See above – literally everything will be different in ways that I don’t even know right now because at this particular moment, I feel like everything is fine. Everything is normal. Once this manuscript is finished, I don’t know what exactly will be different, only that there will be at least one aspect of my life as it is now that will be altered completely.

At the same time, nothing will be different because this one manuscript is just the first of three. I won’t be free from the story itself, and because of that, I will still have these characters rattling around in my head, punctuating my days with their conversations, personalities and goals. Though I will no doubt be encouraged and inspired by the completion of this first manuscript, I still have a lot of work to do in order to finishing telling this story.

4. How will your life be different after you finish three manuscripts? (Will you feel like a “real” writer?)

Personally, I already feel like a “real” writer. Three finished manuscripts only represents this one story. Once I’m done with this story, it will be time to move on to the next. My life will be different because the story stuck in my head will be different. I’ll have different characters occupying my thoughts.

Don’t get me wrong, I will be more than a little bit pleased to have this story completely finished. I suspect that the challenge of conquering this monster of a story will instill in me a sense of accomplishment that I have probably never felt before. It is truly something unlike anything I’ve ever done. These characters aren’t based on me or anyone I know. The subject matters are not anything I’ve ever dealt with before. This story is fundamentally different than everything else I have ever written. I’m already proud of the fact that I took a huge leap of faith and trusted myself enough to take on a project that scared me to my core. Actually finishing this project? When I finish it (not if), I will be hard pressed to find a bigger, more momentous accomplishment in my life up to this point.

5. How will you feel about yourself after you finish this manuscript? (Will you have more confidence?)

I will feel relief, pride and yes, confidence. This project is so different than what I am accustomed to and I am so far out of my comfort zone. I’ll need that boost of confidence and reassurance to tackle the second and third parts of the story. I’m not saying that the other two parts will be smooth sailing and without their own sets of challenges to overcome, but once I’ve done the first part I will not only know that it can be done, but also that I can do it.

6. How will this feeling help you accomplish other things in life?

I sort of answered this in the last answer, but in the basic spirit of this entire post – you know, the whole soul bearing business I’ve been doing here – I feel that there is something I have to say here… Something I have to get off my chest once and for all.

There are a lot of things in my life that I want to accomplish that I just HAVEN’T accomplished. They don’t all revolve around writing, however I genuinely feel that writing is the biggest unanswered question in my life and that my life is on almost permanent hold because I’ve left that question unanswered for so long. Sure, I’ve gotten to the point where I am comfortable enough with myself to know that I will write regardless of whether or not I will ever make a living from writing, but it doesn’t change the fact that there is a very big part of me that would like nothing more than to make a living from writing. Can I do that? Is that something within my grasp?

There’s a strange duality in my life with regards to writing. I can never surrender myself to a job, no matter how much I like it, because I know that my heart is with my writing. My jobs are always the thing I must endure because I have not yet been brave enough to attempt making my living off writing. I’ve put myself and my writing “out there” enough to receive some very encouraging and helpful rejection letters, but I was always holding something back in those small forays in the big bad writer’s world.

I have written a dozen query letters to a dozen literary agents. I haven’t actually sent out one of them. Instead, I entered writing contests and submitted to numerous slush piles, knowing full well that the chances of my best work getting noticed would be slim… What’s worse than that? The fact that rather than facing the fear that my best work might not be “good enough,” I purposely submitted pieces that I knew needed work.

In any job I’ve ever had in my life, if someone encouragingly suggested ways that my less polished work might be made better, I would wholeheartedly jump in and make those changes immediately and resubmit what I did. It’s how I’ve been able to shine at almost every single job I’ve ever held. In that regard, I am a great employee. In almost every job I’ve ever had, I did my utmost to avoid “half-assing” anything. Submitting work that was not my best is an alien concept to my in my professional life. That work ethic has won me awards that are essentially meaningless to me because they were won for work that I didn’t care about one little bit.

I’m free to excel in jobs I neither like nor care about because my identity is not tied to how well or how badly I perform (of course, let’s not mention the fact that I generally choose jobs that are so far beneath me that excelling at them is an absolute cakewalk anyway). I CARE about writing, though, which you would think means that I would never deign to allow my less-than-stellar work ever see the light of day. Call me weird, I guess. I have a complicated psychology.

In writing, though, those same encouragingly suggested ways to improve my less polished work wind up being procrastinated. Intellectually, I know that an editor or slush-pile reader would not take the time to write out detailed explanations for why my work is not being accepted and give me helpful ways to make what I submitted better. Intellectually, I know that they don’t end their letters with an encouragement to resubmit. Compared to normal rejection letters, some of the ones I’ve received are akin to a love letter from my soul mate.

Emotionally, though, I’m riddled with self-doubt about my ability to sustain myself and my family with writing. That self-doubt manifests itself in weird ways – being secretive about what I’m writing and what I really want to accomplish with my writing, distracting myself with triviality to keep from finishing a project (because finishing a project means having to “put myself out there”), throwing myself into jobs and projects that have nothing to do with writing… the list goes on.

The point of all of this is that I have to make a decision about that Mystery Box.⁴ I have to answer that question and be ready to accept that maybe I won’t be able to sustain myself and my family with my writing. Maybe I will. But sitting and hoping for something to happen when I’m not doing absolutely everything I could possibly be doing to make it happen is not just not working. I can’t even say “it’s not working anymore” because the truth of the matter is that it was never “working,” it was just “getting by.”

I don’t want to just “get by” anymore. I want to know for sure, and I genuinely feel that this project is the best way. This story is amazingly exciting to me – which is saying something because, as I’ve mention, I’m not a fan of sci-fi/fantasy. The characters are some of the most interesting characters I’ve ever written. I actually researched obscure historical information to use as a bit of seasoning in their already colorful backgrounds (well, at least the ones with multi-century histories). It has the potential right now to be the best thing I’ve ever written and because of that, this is the first project I have ever started where I have found myself actually wanting to “put myself out there” with.

Basically, I’ve had an epic digression that has literally taken me ALL DAY to write (no joke, I started this post 14 hours ago). The point is that I’ve left huge areas of my life ambiguous because I could not bring myself to move one way or the other on writing.

And on that note, I’m off. This was a bigger amount of emotional soul searching than I anticipated when I started this post (literally, within an hour of waking up, I started this post). Time for a nice little braincation…

Related posts:

1. Getting ready to lay some serious groundwork
2. BIAM: Kickoff Delayed Slightly
3. Hau’oli Makahiki Hou!
4. Too long…
5. A Corporate Restructure of Sorts

Tags: BIAM, book, dedication, goal, inspiration, motivation, story, writer, Writing