Book Update #2: Estranged Narrative
So today is Tuesday, which means it's time for me to stay accountable by checking in and updating you on what I've accomplished over the last week.
Much like those diet plans that ask you to check in with a group about how well you did at sticking to your calorie goals, this plan seems to be serving only as an outlet for my shame.
I wrote no words on my novel. I ate many cookies.
I think that writing a book is a little like starting a relationship. You go in all enthusiastic, like, YEAH! New beginnings! And for a while you work really hard and it's super fun and everything just flows. But before you know it, you've hit that slump where you're forgetting to return texts, and you start looking at other opening chapters on the street. "Mmm, check out the hook on that once upon a time! Now that's what I call 'en media res,' know what I mean?" And then you blink and you're 70 years old and dying alone because you never finished anything.
It's a tragic fact of a writer's life: the passion ebbs and flows. A professional writer, someone who would be able to make a career out of it, works through this. They put in the work, all day erryday, whether they're feeling it or not. This is the truth.
I'm not there yet.
For me, writing started as a labor of love. I was so intensely serious about what I was writing that it actually got pretty painful (check my Humiliating Throwback Thursday posts if you don't believe me). But once that passion burns out, I'm left with a middle-aged story that's going grey around the temples and has stopped putting the cap back on the toothpaste, and it can get a little hard to attack each new day with the same determination and passion as I started out with.
Then, once you stop working on it for a while, it gets harder to remember why you ever fell in love in the first place.
I'm not saying my story and I have any plans to separate. I just think it maybe needs to splurge on a red convertible, and maybe I need breast implants-- just to spice things up.
My metaphor got weird.
You're welcome.
Much like those diet plans that ask you to check in with a group about how well you did at sticking to your calorie goals, this plan seems to be serving only as an outlet for my shame.
I wrote no words on my novel. I ate many cookies.
I think that writing a book is a little like starting a relationship. You go in all enthusiastic, like, YEAH! New beginnings! And for a while you work really hard and it's super fun and everything just flows. But before you know it, you've hit that slump where you're forgetting to return texts, and you start looking at other opening chapters on the street. "Mmm, check out the hook on that once upon a time! Now that's what I call 'en media res,' know what I mean?" And then you blink and you're 70 years old and dying alone because you never finished anything.
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| This comic has nothing to do with my point. I just thought it was funny. |
It's a tragic fact of a writer's life: the passion ebbs and flows. A professional writer, someone who would be able to make a career out of it, works through this. They put in the work, all day erryday, whether they're feeling it or not. This is the truth.
I'm not there yet.
For me, writing started as a labor of love. I was so intensely serious about what I was writing that it actually got pretty painful (check my Humiliating Throwback Thursday posts if you don't believe me). But once that passion burns out, I'm left with a middle-aged story that's going grey around the temples and has stopped putting the cap back on the toothpaste, and it can get a little hard to attack each new day with the same determination and passion as I started out with.
Then, once you stop working on it for a while, it gets harder to remember why you ever fell in love in the first place.
I'm not saying my story and I have any plans to separate. I just think it maybe needs to splurge on a red convertible, and maybe I need breast implants-- just to spice things up.
My metaphor got weird.
You're welcome.
Passion ebbs and flows, but that's not the tragedy. The tragedy is when we get stuck in one or the other. Flowing passion? A tragedy?
ReplyDeleteYes. Believe it or not. The ebbs and flows work together as a team. One without the other is the real tragedy.