Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Already September, no no no
Holy shit, are we well into September already? This sucks. I haven't accomplished anywhere NEAR what I wanted to this year. Days crept by, weeks, months, and I've puttered around with a handful of different writing projects with very little to show for it so far. I've actually completed three short stories. That's it.
Fuckin' shameful is what it is.
Like every year, I started off with a big MASTER PLAN, and like every year, I never quite got it done. Mostly out of laziness. You know how it is, I reckon. You work a day job, long hours, and even though the job is pretty much a cakewalk, you come home tired at the end of the day and all you want to do is maybe watch a movie or read a little and go to bed. "I'll get up early tomorrow morning and write," you say. But of course you don't.
So life becomes nothing, really, other than existence. And you start getting depressed, maybe, beating yourself up, wondering if you can even really call yourself a writer anymore.
Anyway, you probably know the drill.
So here we are, September, year almost gone. By this time last year, I'd written something like 1,000 pages of new material. This year, not even a fourth of that.
So what do I do about it? Well, the only thing to do, really, is to stop looking back at the wasted months and re-commit to actually getting some stuff done with the time left. I'm well into a Hawthorne novella, and if I do it right I can finish it before the month is over. And then another one (the long-put-off Hawthorne-Laramie cross-over). And then perhaps start on something longer. I don't know. Give ole' Hawthorne a break next year before starting the "second cycle" of his stories.
Mostly, though, I just need to stop being a lazy, tired bastard and get some shit done. I need to follow the example of ace writers like James Reasoner, a man who fuckin' WRITES, brothers and sisters. This whole "nothing more than existence" thing needs to stop.
Anyway, point being: I'm taking a hiatus from the blog here and the social media sites I've become so addicted to (yeah, YOU, Facebook, you seductive Jezebel) until I actually have these things written. Next time I talk to you, my friends, I'll have some solid stories behind me.
James Reasoner is an inspiration. Has been for me for twenty plus years now.
ReplyDeleteHe really is.
Delete