I haven’t posted anything since 2017. So many things have happened across the world since then (most of them bad), but I am not going to talk about them. Enough has been tweeted and Instagrammed and Facebooked to fill the Library of Congress 100 times over.
But I will talk about my writing.
My writing is…going nowhere. I can’t blame this on my vision. I have so many gadgets and apps to help me out with that. No, I just have not been working on any of my WIPs because of my other disability—perfectionism.
Perfectionism is an evil little imp that torments me when I get close to finishing a project. “What if this has all been for nothing?” it howls. “What is the point of writing something no one will read? You can’t get anything published if you don’t have an agent, and what agent will be interested in this drivel? Write the opening over (for the 20th time), slant the story a little bit this way, wait, no that way. Run it through twelve more beta readers. Or just give up, your writing will never be good enough, never…”
And though I struggle to shut out that imp, to clap my hands over my ears to keep out its incessant harangue, I end up listening. Listening and yielding, regressing to TV watching, book reading, sleeping, and distracting myself with something new. All my works in progress—New Mexico Heat, Dandy’s Dragon, Sylvellin Sending, Vermin, and many others—languish in a dimly lit corner. From time to time they pick at me, reaching out undernourished fingers to pluck my sleeve. “Come back to us, we need your help, come back to us and make us complete. Free us, release us into the bright light!”
Waah, waah, waah, I have to laugh at myself! What a load of BS. Dramatizing my indolent fear of failing like it’s a Grimm fairy tale might be entertaining, but it will get me nowhere fast!
So, I have started re-reading The Artist Way, reading through old Morning Pages, noting how many things I HAVE accomplished since 2006 when I first moved to New Mexico and started all these projects. I will, as I always have, get back on that horse and eventually, gradually triumph!
At least I will move forward. Let me pick one project and focus on that for one month. But which one?
Hmm, of course it needs to be the perfect choice. Right? Right?
Sigh…