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NaNoWriMo Day 1 sort of did my head in by exposing my soft white underbelly. Hmm. Wait, I think I'm mixing things up there! But it did rather swamp me over with all of my writing insecurities burbling up from within and making my day rather tiresome.

Things I had running around in mah headbrainspace:
  • I won't know what to write about.
  • Whatever I do write will be stupid.
  • And other people have already written it, and written it better.
  • Or I'll be completely paralyzed with fear and just sit and stare at the computer for an hour and a half.
  • And who am I to think I should be writing anyway.
  • I am not creative in that way.
  • And what makes me think anyone wants to read what I might write. It's not like a get a zillion comments or have tons of people beating down my door to betassuage my work. (hey look, I just made up a word! that's creative, right?)

And see, I know that point is just to show up and put some words down and hope for the best. And so I did that. And it was good to sit there and bang out some sentences and get to just under 1400 words.

But here on the morning after I am having, not worthless thoughts, but am re-examining what I did as it felt hollow somehow. Like it was just some rote thing I was working on and wasn't ME somehow. Which taps into that 'what makes you think you are a writer anyway' thing. Which is silly. If I say I am a writer, then I am one. I am not a prolific writer. Nor do I think I'm am a particularly good storyteller. I think I am good at short moody evocative pieces. I like to play around with dialogue. And often I quite like the stuff I write.

But then I turn around and read what other people are writing and get a MASSIVE inferiority complex and have to go lie down under the covers for a while and hug something. And tell myself "Writing, I wish I could quit you." :D

All of which, strangely proves that NaNo is a good thing to be doing. I wish I thought doing it would conquer these fears. But I read what professional (i.e. someone is paying for what they've written) writers say about their process ... and I see what those people who drive me under the covers say about their process ... and it all sounds pretty much like what I go through.

So while I'd rather not sit here quivering with fear wondering if I can face sitting down for another 90 minutes of typing tonight, I know that its the showing up that counts. That NaNo is supposed to be about output and not judgment of that output.

But dammit ... writing SCARES ME. I literally have shaking hands sometimes when I go and try to write something. And somehow I need to get past that fear. That fear is keeping me from producing more stuff. And my head knows that to write better you have to write MOAR! But I can't always talk myself into it. But for this month I will try. Most days I think I am really really bad at this. And I know I need to learn to love the crap writing. Write out the bad stuff. Write a lot of bad stuff. Right?

Brought to you by the letters PEP and TALK.

One of the writing prompt comms I follow had this as today's prompt: "He woke to the sound of soft, steady knocking coming from the stairs."

Maybe I'll use that and write Sherlock and John fighting because Sherlock just brought home a bag of dead cats or something.

Who knows. But from 6:30 till 8:00 tonight I will be applying fingers to keyboard ... and trying to leave the judgments and the freaking out for another day.

How long is November???

This entry was originally posted at http://valancy-joy.dreamwidth.org/134163.html

Date: 2010-11-03 02:36 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] alba17.livejournal.com
Oh, I have so many of those same thoughts and feelings about writing. *hugs* Put all those left-brain thoughts on the shelf for this month, bb.

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