Tags
focus, how many metaphors can Amy fit into one paragraph?, passion, persistence, pressure to write, routine, writing, writing what you love
But you know? I think I’m just going to go with it this time.
I’ve spent the better part of a year grimly clinging to one project or another while my brain basically did the bored-kid-in-the-backseat routine… kicking the back of my seat, fiddling with the windows while we’re on the highway, singing The Song That Never Ends loudly and off-key, and clocking the back of my head with a tiny, angry fist shouting no returns! whenever a VW Bug passes us.
(Can you tell I have younger siblings?)
Anyway. I’ve managed, more or less, to ignore this routine for the last 7 months. After all, writing a book is about focus and persistence as much as it is about talent and craft.
And I’m just going to go ahead and ignore the fact that I virtuously focused and persisted for 7 months on a project that was originally a distraction from a revision that was a distraction from a rewrite, because I think the irony might kill me. And hell, the process of slogging forward against the iron-fisted whims of my subconscious very nearly did that already.
Writing, particularly writing something book-length, is about persistence. It’s about putting words on the page even when you can’t think of anything to say. It’s about skipping that party your friends invited you to, confirming your reputation as a 30-year-old hermit, to get in another four pages and finish the damn scene. It’s usually about routine, and occasionally about guilt, and always about kicking yourself in the ass to jumpstart a sentence. It’s about pressure.
It’s also, however, about passion– because if you don’t love what you’re doing, chances are pretty good nobody else is going to either.
I think I kind of forgot that over the last half-year –I’ve been sitting on the pressure end of the scale for a long time now– but I had a reminder of the piano-falling-from-a-third-story-window variety last week, and I think maybe it’s time to follow the toddler in the backseat for a bit.
So I’m going to wander off and follow the shiny for a bit. Hopefully it’s not just a whole new way of procrastinating. đ