Habits
Habits are difficult things to break.
There are a lot of things I do that happen simply because they’re
what I have always done. I have a listing in my internet bookmarks
called ‘daily review’. Every time I am on the computer for any length
of time I open that list of bookmarks and roll through each of the
sites there. I don’t need to see any of those sites. They’re a mix of
news, entertainment and web comics that I follow. It’s important to
keep up on the news of the day, but there really isn’t a single one
of those web sites that I couldn’t catch up with at some other point
in the day OR just skip. Seeing the latest “Off The Mark” comic
strip is not something that’s going to deeply change my day. I could
skip all of them and not really miss anything at all. It’s a hard
habit to break.
As it turns out, it’s also challenging
to create new habits. Doing good things, making long term positive
changes is not easy either. This applies to anything, but it is
particularly difficult for me to do this with writing. My writing
tends to take a back seat. There are a lot of reasons for this. The
main reasons aren’t easy to pin down, but I think the biggest are
lack of inspiration and fear of judgment
Writing at the level I really want is
work. I tend to write when I am inspired. When I have that spark the
words come pouring out. I have pages and pages of hand written notes
with almost no scratch outs or edits. I become the Zeus of the story
and chunks just pop from my head fully formed. The problem with that
is combining inspiration and the actual time needed to sit and get
all the words recorded. There’s at least a novel worth of words that
have faded away because I couldn’t manage to get them to the page
when the dream was fresh or the mood was in full swing. I can’t
afford to wait on these pages. I need to sit and write and keep it
all in some kind of recorded form, whatever that form may be. Typed,
handwritten, voice recording – doesn’t matter. Get the words out
there and do it all the time.
It’s easy to hear others talk about these things. I know that Ray Bradbury used to write ten thousand words a day. Sounds like the perfect recipe for writing books. I’ve often snatched a line from one of my other favorite authors. When I heard Jim Butcher talk about writing he said, “I don’t have a muse, I have a mortgage…” I knew there was truth there. Writing is work. Work needs to be done on a regular basis. I do not do enough of that kind of work.
Judgment
The other part of my inability to start
good habits is this fear of judgment. If I put myself out there and
claim to be a writer I will be judged by my ability to string
together coherent statements with the proper use of grammar AND it
will all need to be spelled right. Then, after all the basics, I need
to actually have something to say.
Two main parts to that. First the
spelling and grammar portion is not easy. I am terrible at spelling.
I can look at this page alone and see at least 3 words with squiggly
red lines under them. They are words that I absolutely should know
how to spell and I just can’t seem to get them right. I don’t know
why, but they don’t stick. It’s physically difficult for me to keep
typing and not go back to edit while I’m letting the words continue
to come out. Going back to edit can and should be something that is
done after all the words are out. Too often I stop what I am thinking
to go back and craft the perfect phrase or clean up all the spelling
that is glaring at me in red. Breaking the flow stops the words and
just as often as not they don’t start again. Grammar is worse.
Grammar is one of those things that I know I should know, but I feel
a bit like Gandalf in the LOTR movies, “I have no memory of this
place…”. I am faking my way through it all and anyone that has
half a clue about how grammar works probably cringes at the word
salad I toss out.
Impostor
The second part is the judgment All
this writing is out there for people to read, and very few people
actually read it. The fact that I can name the people who interact
with me when it comes to my writing says a lot about my success.
That’s the true judgment part. It’s not having some troll throw angry
words down about what I have said, it’s that all of this amounts to
nothing. Getting somebody to react, somebody to actually read what I
have labored to create would allow them to look at my terrible
spelling and grammar and think, “this guy is a writer? I could do
better…”. One of the harshest critiques I’ve ever had was at a
book signing. The book signing had a line of authors from the
anthology. As people shuffled along the line of authors this guy
asked me, “and what story was yours?”. When I told him his face
froze in place and then he said, “Oh. That one was… nice.”. I
thanked him again and he stepped down the line to the next author.
That really sucked. He’d read it and it did nothing for him. That was
a tough one to overcome, but I’ve kept going in the hopes that I’ll
sneak in with the cool kids again one of these days. It’s not easy. I
am slowly slipping into the land of old men standing in the yard and
yelling at the sky.
After all that
This is the sort of rambling, writerly
life-style post that would normally end with some promise not to blog
fade or to use the coming new year as an excuse to claim great
changes are on the way. I’ve done all that before. I’m sure I’ll
re-post one of my successful habits in the coming days about that.
What I am going to say is that this is all a work in progress. I have
seen some short videos lately that have resonated with me about
habits, work ethic and the tool box fallacy. I’ll keep going. In the
future somebody will dig these words up and bring them back for
judgment – at least I will have made them react.
Post Script:
This is one of
those “fully formed” examples. More than a thousand words that
poured out all at once. Now to edit…
