Change of Plans

Well, I think it’s fair to say that things are not working out exactly as planned. I’m not declaring this a failure – not by any stretch of the imagination – but I’m not exactly publishing and posting regularly. That isn’t to say that I haven’t been writing at all; I have the next five parts of my metafiction experiment drafted out, but because now there is a lot of description needed and a bit of research to do to make the scenes with some of my favourite characters from TV and movies as authentic as possible, it is slowing me down a little. That and the way in which the next few parts all need to tie together pretty neatly, so it’s in some ways best to get them all close to complete before publishing any of them.

I’ve also written most of the end, four more parts, drafted up and more or less ready to go, other than whatever tweaking or redrafting will take place once I’ve written the rest of the middle of the story. Obviously they can’t be posted yet either.

Am I just psyching myself out here? Falling into the trap that I always fall into? I had honestly thought that Welcome to the Imaginarium was going to be a short story, but it’s beginning to turn into a novella when I look at the ever expanding word count. I don’t think it will quite be long enough to be classed as an actual novel, but it’s taken on a life of its own now.

This has traditionally been my problem. Keep working on things behind the scenes and never feel like they’re finished, so I never actually wrap them up and move on to something else. Try to write a short story and end up writing a novel, or even starting a series of novels! Is it happening again?

I think, honestly, the answer is no. I don’t think it’s obsessing over feeling like it’s not good enough to be considered finished that is the issue. The more likely explanation is that I’m avoiding getting this next part done because in some ways it’s a painful and unpleasant experience. But that doesn’t quite ring true either. Sometimes, life genuinely does get in the way.

December was a really challenging month for me. Not because of the usual reason (bah, humbug!) but because a lot of issues from my past were coming up and dragging me down. I spent quite a few days mostly or entirely incapacitated, many hours in bed more than I would ordinarily have needed. I lost a whole week, five full days of being totally out of action. My writing saved me, as you will see in the upcoming parts, it was pretty amazing what happened. I also started a new business, and I did a follow-up course to the first course that put me on this journey and led to the creation of this blog, and it turned out to be far more intensive and challenging than I expected. I was spending a lot of time supporting and talking to and listening to people, as we helped each other push through our resistance, let go of our pain, resolve our issues and heal our wounds. I had some editing work come in, which I found extremely difficult and ended up causing a massive stress reaction that was highly debilitating. And, of course, there’s Christmas, which does take some time and effort if you’re going to be a part of it. As you may have seen from my previous post, I actually enjoyed it for the first time in over two decades years, which I’m so happy about because it is a sign of real, significant, lasting progress.

So, in sum, as I think about all of the possibilities behind the reason why I haven’t been writing as much as I want to and also know I need to, and acknowledge there is definitely still some reluctance on my part and unconscious to semi-conscious self-sabotage going on, I think it is mostly that for the past couple of months – after a strong start – a lack of organisation and stretching myself a bit too thin has combined to pull me away from my craft.

My aim was a modest 30 minutes per day for reading and 30 minutes per day for writing, as a minimum. But I failed to achieve that for almost the entire month of December, instead writing sporadically in long bursts or not at all, and reading hardly at all. So now I’ve taken it all the way down to 10 minutes per day each. As anyone who likes to write will know, 10 minutes is barely enough time to achieve anything. But the idea that it’s only 10 minutes gets me to the keyboard, and I end up writing for longer, like with this post. I’ve written a couple of scenes from the next part of my metafiction this week using this method of “it’s only 10 minutes”, and that’s progress. Today I was feeling very tired (stayed up all night again, sleep pattern is seriously screwed since pulling multiple all-nighters to get my overdue work completed and submitted) and I was also thinking that it’s no good not publishing anything for weeks, so I figured I would just come on and start writing something, then publish it. It took about 18 minutes, plus 3 minutes to think of and locate an image, plus 6 minutes to give it a quick once over. Not too shabby.

I’ll try to do these online journal entries a bit more often. Social commentary. Reviews of media I love or hate. Mix it up a bit. Publish more regularly, interspersed with getting my metafiction story finished, because I’m really proud of it and excited about where it’s heading, and I know when it’s done it will have changed me for the better. And I’m also excited about my plans for other short(ish) stories I want to write on here. But Plan A wasn’t working, so it’s time to see how Plan B goes…