Confessions and priorities
I have to make a few confessions right now:
- My Untitled Sci-Fi/Fantasy Project has been on hold for the past 3 weeks. No excuse except, I haven’t worked on it.
- Though I made some decent strides the first few days of NaNoWriMo, I basically haven’t done any WriMoing in at least 9 days… and confessing this does not come with the promise that I will change my ways to get back on the WriMo Wagon.
- Since November 6th, writing has not been my priority. It hasn’t even blipped my radar.
- I have been beating myself up pretty hard about each thing on this list (including this item here) for awhile now (yes, this means that I’ve been beating myself up for beating myself up… I never said I was the pinnacle of mental health).
A project came up.
No… scratch that. It didn’t come up.
About two years ago – perhaps longer – I committed to help someone develop a website and the extensive content within that site. This is not a simple blog or corporate “hey! This is who we are and what we do!” site. This is a fully interactive, content rich, and seriously complex project.
I never expected the project to start.
There were some delays and procrastinating (amazingly, not on my part!!!!). We’d have some discussions about getting things started (“hey, we should work on that project…”), but it never turned into anything. I would always end up twiddling my thumbs and waiting for things to get started so I could begin work.
As I said, two years went by and nothing. So, imagine my surprise when the “we should work on that project” talk went from just talk to actual action. Suddenly, it was in my face – I had to start working on something and fulfill my promise! I have to actually get things moving on someone else’s time table.
Secretly, though, I welcomed the distraction. I liked having an excuse not to write because I was running into problems left and right with the writing. I liked being able to dive straight into a project that I am not in any way emotionally invested. With this project, if there’s something I don’t like, I can voice my concerns, but rest in the knowledge that the project is not my own.
It’s kind of freeing.
But there’s that nagging in the back of my head, constantly reminding me that my own projects are languishing and dying for some attention. Then the guilt comes in. And the brow beating.
So, yes… there’s a project. It’s not mine, but I have committed myself to work on it. Even though it’s time consuming, I really don’t like what it says about me as a writer (and my commitment to writing) to just so happily chuck aside the writing for something that’s not writing at all.
What that means to me is that I need to stop living in excuseville and get back to writing. Yes, I have my project commitments, but that’s not EVERY minute of my life. There will be moments to myself. There will be free time. Maybe I won’t have the time to sit blankly at the screen and will the words to come to me. I won’t have the time to complain that I have to write because I didn’t hit my word count. I just have to get over myself and make my actions fit with my priorities.
Also, I think it’s high time for me to start acting like writing is the thing I get to do rather than the thing I have to do.
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