Writing.

Have a lot to do today, but I am still making these goals.  Edit 2 chapters.  Begin writing short story.

For the week, I would like to write this whole short story, but it hasn't fully come to me yet, so it depends on creativity.  Creativity has been missing since my last bout of depression.  I would also like to get much more of this book edited.

The parts that go in between these lines are as follows, but a little backwards.

I finished my first book a decade ago.  I had decided in high school that I am not creative or smart, so I decided not to be a writer.  After that, I read a high percentage of non-fiction, but also some fiction.  The way my friends read now (2-5 books a week) is how I used to read, but I forget that and feel inadequate now because I feel good of I finish 2 in a month.  I was also in college so reading text books and assigned literature.  Additionally, I dabbled a little in writing and honestly only minored in English so I could take upper division creative writing classes which.  While I continued to feel inadequate because the teachers thought I did will, technically, but never praised me even slightly, I knew it was an excuse to write.  After college, I wrote, but kept it secret from everyone.  Well, if you decide you are going to quit writing, you can't lie to yourself, but I tried.  I look back and some poems and short ideas I wrote out sporadically, lots of starts and spurts, but no conclusions, and laugh at myself because I thought I wasn't writing.  Years late I found some floppy disks with notes about what is on them.  I could not retrieve them and have since thrown them out, but I read the scribbles on them or with them explaining what was on those disks and remember that I wasn't a writer at that point. Hilarious.

In the next transition of my life, I got caught up in fan fiction.  I will never bash on fanfic, I hope, but I will say that having the characters already there for you to use is a little easier than writing novels.  This was perfect because I had married and moved to another state.  In the course of those fanfic years, I did not work and we adopted out daughter.  I can't decide if it was a perfect transition back into writing or the curse of the plot bunnies which brought me back to writing fiction.  Ideas flooded my brain.

So I wrote.  I wrote my first book in no time at all and it felt great.  Soon I started my second, but then I got slowed down.  We moved back and I felt like writing was not a legitimate reason not to spend my days doing everything everyone else asked of me.  I still feel that way, but the requests have slowed down.  I fill up my time with cleaning, selling Avon, doing things for those who still ask, and being there for my family, but this does still give me time to write.  I've written a couple other novels, edited them (I hate the editing part!) and prepped them to certain degrees, but I keep coming back to the first and changing it, making it better, I feel certain, but never quite done.  It seems like in these years I should have been able to write a dozen novels, but the problem then becomes my mood and leads to the other part mentioned at the beginning.

I read authors who say you have to dedicate certain time each day or week; it's a job.  Yes, that is excellent advice and I do try to do that.  It's not like I can only write when the mood strikes me or that it is not important to me, but there are times where pushing myself to write just makes things worse.  I have ups and downs and sometimes the ups just don't let me focus enough to write and then the downs don't let me care about writing which is normally the most important thing to me.  I'm loathe to use terms to describe myself since I haven't seen a professional therapist since I was 15, so I will just say that these problems have always existed in aspects of my life.  I would get a job, be high, and then get so low I would quit.  I might regret it later, but I just did not know how to survive through the depressed periods and maintain my jobs which means I had many jobs in my life.

So, as much as I try to make it my job so I can churn out a book a year, I just don't think that plan is realistic for everyone.  Then I have friends and family who know I write and feel compelled to tell me about authors who put out two books a year or who have published 80 in their lifetime, etc.  This kills me.  I wish I could be this prolific, but I just can't.  Does that make me a failure?  Does that make me less of an artist or less worthy of the title 'author'?  I hope not.  I have hopes of being published someday, but right now what I imagine as the perfect end goal is a finished story, not a book contract so just writing works for me.  This is enough.

Which brings me to the now.  I am back to editing that first book again (many times later) and I am convinced this is THE ONE, if I can get through to the end, but I have many chapters to go.  I also have an idea for a short story novel and am hoping a minimum of ten stories so I'd like to do about one a month so I can have a collection soon.  I do have one finished that needs tweaking.  I only have two other ideas.  Must keep mind open for more.