can I be a rock star instead?
I’m not exactly blown away by inspiration. I have some friends on Twitter who are regularly knocked over by plot bunnies with pneumatic arms and swiveling ears and cottonball tails that can shoot fire. (Erm… that was not to mean they write science fiction. Not all of them, at least.)
What I mean, is they suffer from an over-active imagination.
Share the wealth!
I wonder sometimes if I write because I like the idea of writing. Sure, for me it means getting up at 4 a.m. during the week so I have quiet time. It means crawling in bed by 10 p.m. after an evening spent wishing I was writing, but each time I get to, my mind draws a blank. It means prowling industry blogs during spare minutes, instead of reading the next good book. It means having Gladware containers in my sitting-room-turned-office, overflowing with a rainbow assortment of sticky notes in every size imaginable. It means Sharpie markers scattered around the house next to crumpled pictures of stick-figured Mommy/Daddy/Me and suspicious smudges on the couch.
It means nights of insomnia, broken only when the husband comes downstairs and shoots me The Eye. It means sunny days spent indoors on my computer, or racking my brain for an activity with the four-year-old that will make me look like a good mom but with the underlying motive of research.
It means the Groupon deals I actually follow up on are for shooting range time, or for skydiving, or for a helicopter flight lesson (yeah, baby!).
It means bouts of depression, of anxiety, of feeling different and misunderstood. It means hiding a little piece of who I am from the world, for fear of being mislabeled or ridiculed.
So… why do I want to keep on?
I don’t have manila folders overflowing with scraps of paper or restaurant napkins holding precious ideas. I don’t have notebooks of research on abstract careers. (Though I do have a book on profiling killers, and a box of enneagram cards… for that matter, I may be the only person I know who knows what an enneagram IS … and I find morgue pictures fascinating, and instead of saving up my money for jewelry, I spend it instead on the latest Apple toy and writing books.)
Okay, so despite the magnetic attraction of all the above, what on Earth is making me keep going? (If you’re reading this, you MIGHT POSSIBLY understand; or you’re a friend who has to suffer the pain of supporting me in this endeavor, and for that I thank you… but you don’t count.)
If I stop, I’ll have more quality time to spend with my family. I’ll be able to pursue a MHA for my career. I might actually care MORE about my career and have the time to forge ahead. (Wait — I have a career?!?) I’ll get more sleep and lose the bruises under my eyes. I might even be able to kick the caffeine addiction!
*snort*
But I’m not very happy when I don’t think about this silly endeavor. Not to say that I am happy at the MOMENT because I’m stagnating and spinning my wheels and beating my brain and am frakking SICK of this novel. But I’m always thinking about it. Always searching for a better way to say something. Fascinated by writing articles and how to apply someone else’s method to my own to see if it will work better for me. I love my online friends (HTRYN, NaNoPubYe and Twitter, y’all rock!) and their support keeps me going when I can’t do it myself.
But goodness grief and sweet Baby Jesus, couldn’t you have given me a better obsession, like being a rock star or something? I mean, how hard could that really be?