Writing is so masochistic.
After the New York marathon late last year, I really felt confident in my ability to actually show and exercise discipline. I was a very regimented child, teenager and young adult. I loved lists and crossing things off of them. I hardly ever procrastinated. My free time was just that - free. I don’t recall guilty feelings, knowing that leisure time was coming at the expense of not getting something else done. Then, around 26 or 27 I guess, when work got really serious, that slowly started to change, at least when it came to my personal life and things I wanted to accomplish
At work, I’m extremely efficient and unfortunately, think I just give too, too much. Somehow, I slipped into a bad routine of not letting that same passion carry on at home for anything. I convinced myself that I used up all my energy at work and therefore, some personal things and to-do’s became less important. I knew it was unhealthy and a bad mindset, and I largely ignored it. Then, around two years ago I started my craft blog which really let me channel my creativity into something and see it pay dividends. And then I really got a healthy dose of reality when the marathon came along.
The marathon was a true lesson in putting in the right input to get the right output. If I didn’t run my miles during the week, I couldn’t do the long runs on the weekends. If I couldn’t do the long runs on the weekends, I wouldn’t be able to do the marathon. Simple as that. So despite the pain, the annoyance, the perceived lack of time, whatever my excuse was that day- I charged ahead and slowly but surely chipped away at the ultimate goal. It was a fantastic lesson in pushing beyond your self-imposed limits, not to mention being bad at something at first, and practicing until you were good.
All that is to say, I’m trying so very hard to apply that same thinking to actually writing the book I moved to New York to try and write. But somehow, it feels so much harder. Tumblr doesn’t help. I follow so many great writers, beautiful writers, funny writers, and it’s hard not to feel like this is an effort in futility.
First and foremost, it’s a club. I was intimidated by that for a long time, especially with the brief peek into the world I had when I worked at Radar. It’s taken quite a bit of time to realize any profession is a club, it just so happens this one runs two thirds of Manhattan media so it’s hard to ignore. But I’ve moved past it.
The challenge I’m stuck with now is more like - who am I kidding? I know they say your first drafts are supposed to be crap, but this just looks like crap deluxe to me. I can’t even see the eventual shape of a story in these first sentences and lines. Maybe that’s the way it is? I don’t know. It just looks awful and I feel like that Dan Brown character that whips his back raw and then wears a hairy shirt just to feel closer to God. Except not that dramatic. Or anything to do with God. But hopefully you see where I’m going there.
Like the marathon, when I huffed and puffed my way through the first two miles on Day One of training, I never, ever thought I could finish an entire race. But then I did and I actually did better than I ever thought I could do. I know I have to approach this in the same way, but somehow, it’s so much more mentally horrible.
