end of year deadlines

I think being a writer is simultaneously one of the the things I most love about myself but that also most stresses me out, especially because I just spent two minutes figuring out how to spell simultaneously—and yes, I did just Google, copy, paste.

My main wip—and yes I have to say that, because last time I counted I had twelve to fifteen series in progress—is an urban/modern fantasy novel set in Seattle and revolves mainly around Earth/plant magic. And I’ve been working on it for five years.

I think every year for the past three I’ve said, this is the year I’ll finish it. And last month I only just hit the halfway point.

Is that so incredibly frustrating that sometimes I want to cry? Yes! Do I sometimes want to throw my laptop in the bin and give up? Yeah! But does the thought of never seeing my characters reach their ending and never be shared with anyone else make me sad? Also yes.

Being a writer, for me anyway, because I think each artists’ process is different, is probably ninety percent writing nothing while feeling horrible about writing nothing and ten percent writing as if I’m about to lose my hands. Or my mind.

Which honestly it mostly feels like the latter.

The thing is just I can’t see myself not writing. I can’t imagine never writing again. To do so sounds so miserable it wouldn’t be worth the effort of daily life.

I mean I write, in my head, to put myself to sleep at night. Mainly fanfics of my own uncompleted stories, if I’m going to keep up the theme of being embarrassingly truthful.

So yeah, I’m working on finishing chapter eighteen. And it feels grueling. Which leaves a lot of room for insecurity about how it could be someday read by an audience. But every little word I get on the screen or paper makes me happy, if for no other reason than it’s a visualization of all my internal anguish and planning.

Writing right now is a weird process of stressing so much about hitting my self-implemented goal that I stunt every other thought I could have.

The goal, by the way?

Ten more chapters in two weeks.

The first book in the series to be done by the end of the year, actually. But that looks so wholly impossible now that I find myself asking if it’s even worth it, to try, because it won’t be enough to meet the line anyway.

Which is where I should remind myself that every word is a victory and direct myself to the paragraph a few inches above where I said every word makes me happy. Because it does, really and truly. Sometimes I look at all the letters I’ve typed and feel giddy. But also: feelings of inadequacy.

It’s probably best to remind myself, until I get so sick of hearing myself say it that I don’t do things that require me to, that I write first and foremost because I love it. Don’t get me wrong, I need it as well—very much so. But I also enjoy it immensely, so really, everything else shouldn’t take precedence.

It’s also probably best to put sticky notes on my desk with the reminder on them, or else I will forget and not do it until I’m crying over my keyboard again, or re-having this entire conversation with myself all over.

As a related warning, I think it’s best to inform you, at this moment, that a lot of these posts are going to be monologues and jotted down thought-processes of me simply talking to myself about my dilemmas, self-therapying them, and reaching my own conclusion—and a lot of them will be repetitively me writing in circles.

To be further honest one last time today, I genuinely don’t know what a blog actually is, if not that.

On an unrelated topic, I’ve rubbed eyeshadow into my eyes while doing this and now before I write myself any encouraging sticky notes I need to go handle my itching eyes.

cm