Still Travelling
Its been a while since I’ve written here. It doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing – in fact, I think I’ve written quite a lot since I last wrote anything here. I’ve mostly been dabbling in different projects and trying to see the wood for the trees. I’m fairly sure that being a writer, just like any other craft, is hard work, harder than it was when I first started last year, because you have to keep motivating yourself when things around you are distracting. I still don’t have a definitive answer for avoiding distraction when you’re a writer (or an illustrator, or an artist or creative person).
I’m still learning from trial and error and trying to get myself focused. A lot of the time, I feel like I’m swimming in thick soup – I feel sluggish and reluctant to sit down and write something. The past couple of days have been more productive though, more productive than anything I’ve done in the past few months. The change of season in the air is a kind of balm, the sort of breeze that whips through and clears the cobwebs. I feel more able to focus my mind on the task in hand – pushing myself towards a freelance writing career, building my experience and figuring out to do what I love doing and making myself money.
The past week I’ve been excited by the possibility of the Steampunk genre mixed with Urban Fantasy/Supernatural fiction. What I want from a story is for it to be exciting to write, for it to be new, even though I’m rusty and most likely won’t write something incredible to start with. The last short story I wrote was a few months ago, and perhaps because I’ve been depressed and sluggish its just been on the backburner. What I want is to find a way of motivating myself at my lowest points. Its no wonder that people think writers are tortured – they don’t necessarily have a lot of self belief, and writing is incredibly hard and painstaking. If I find it hard to write a short story, I just know that when I sit down to write my first novel, it will be ten times harder but definitely worth it.
I’ve also set up my own website, to have the best of my blogs in one place. That doesn’t mean I won’t be writing here, or at Cats and Chocolate, or at Polka Dots and Rainbows, but it does mean that I might have other content on it that doesn’t appear anywhere else. It makes me wonder why I’ve got all these blogs if I’ve actually got somewhere that can have more potential, since I’m also paying for it every month. I’ve always felt like I wanted a home of my own on the web – you know, a place where I can be myself but also sell my talents and creativity to the world so that I can make a living for myself. I’ve changed over the years, as people do. My changes have been both startling and difficult – I feel I’m more confident that I’ve ever been but at the same time could do with more confidence and self belief. Being a writer means I have to work under my own steam and be confident that I will get there.
How I felt a year ago compared to now only makes me realise that I’m still on a journey and it will take a while before I’m completely confident in my ability as a writer. I’ve written for years but not half as much as I’m writing now. Last year I set free a part of me that needed to come out, from under the pile of books I’m usually hidden under. I’ve proven to myself that I can write about a great many things – fashion, deafness, politics, feminism, writing, books, music, theatre, films, society and many more besides. Writing is like breathing to me – I don’t think I could exist without it. I might be able to, but it would be joyless, and I doubt I would be able to express myself well enough.
I’ve learnt that writing a character is the most important thing to me. If I can find a good character, then the story flows better, and I’m less inclined to give up before I’ve even started. My commitment to a certain character means that I keep going because I need to tell their story. I do sometimes start with a concept or time period or a certain idea, but I think fitting a character around something is a bad idea because their story develops from their personality, and not the other way around. I know that some writers find that starting with a setting or era or some other idea works for them, but I’ve discovered that characterisation is the biggest starter for me most of the time. You could have a great story but a one dimension character – so the reader will probably give up.
The past few days I’ve just been easing myself back into clustering and freewriting, so that the ideas are starting to flow again. I feel less like I’m flailing around and more like there is a flow to my thoughts and ideas. I accept that there are painful moments when you can’t write a great idea down and you have to learn to let go. Nobody said writing was a happy profession! Perhaps that is why I have such moments of depression – I’m happier once I’m mid-way through something and have committed something to paper (or screen). The time before and after that are incredibly torturous, because you have to force yourself to sit down and write, and then you have to start the editing process, which can be agonising but necessary.
So what is it all for? I don’t know. Thats my answer – I don’t know. You might say its because writing and reading are my passions, or you might say that its because I just can’t stop. Some days I write and write and then feel like I’m losing ideas if I don’t keep going. I have to physically stop myself from writing from dusk til dawn sometimes, because there are other things in my life and I have to live. Writing is reliving things, it isn’t living itself. It makes me feel things more acutely and helps me to work out what I feel about things – the truth. It might be ‘making up’ things, but its also about telling the truth, and being honest with yourself. For me, its about keeping my heart and mind open, about learning. I will always be learning things.
I don’t write all these blogs because I’m a narcissist and want acceptance. I write because I want to share, and have people share with me. Its because maybe someone will stumble across one or all of my blogs and find it strikes a chord with them – that they want to write too, that they’ve been denying themselves, or that they want to be more creative. We get one life (as far as I know), and living it is the most important thing.
Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will. ~ George Bernard Shaw.
