This morning I ran across Cara M.'s blog, quite by accident. It is a brand-new blog, raw, without a groove or a theme or a voice beyond its simple manifesto. The rough edges grated on me, but something she said, for whatever reason, really struck home: "Being an aspiring novelist and having a blog seems to be par for the course these days." And isn't that right? So here I am.
I've been trying to get back into writing for years. I say, "get back," but that's somewhat misleading; I feel like I never got into writing properly in the first place. When I was about ten I boldly scribbled out opening scenes before losing interest: a retelling of Mary Reade's story, an Oz-esque tale of a girl who gets lost down a laundry chute, things like that. These ideas never would have gone far; they were careless piles of imagination, without any finesse or research. My attention span also left something to be desired. As I matured, I wrote more, but always collaboratively, mostly in pbp RPGs online. I was too insecure to begin or complete a project of my own. I fully fell out of the habit of writing when I moved into a dorm, in high school; I think the culture shock of moving away from home combined with the sudden lack of privacy to give me a killer case of writer's block.
By the time I dropped out of college a year and a half in, I wasn't even reading anymore. I had a rough outline for a massive urban fantasy novel with four main characters, half a dozen separate races, and more than its fair share inconsistencies and plot holes. I spent a few years trying to resurrect that story before finally shelving it. This summer, the clouds parted on a number of issues in my life, and with that came a whole new story: a new setting, new characters, and a new tone. It was simpler, more original, and on a smaller scale, the perfect combination of more promising and less ambitious. I leapt on it like a starving cat. I even did some writing longhand, something I hadn't tried since those early days of stories about pirates and fairy-land.
As summer drew to a close, I started to lose momentum; work was picking up, travel was ending, and I was sinking back into the depression that had plagued me before. Examining this trend, I realized that, for writing at least, the honey-moon was over. If I wanted this story to happen, I was going to have to do some actual work.
That meant writing again, something I hadn't done deliberately since leaving school. I'm amazed at how difficult a habit it is to return to. I've tried various tricks--morning pages, NaNoWriMo, keeping a journal--but no dice; I couldn't stick with it. Finally, it occurred to me that I might be suffering from a lack of an audience. All those tactics felt totally masturbatory, and my self-disgust fueled my much-diminished writer's block. I don't know why, since no one is going to read this blog right away, but it feels somehow different. And it must be, a little, seeing as how I just hammered out 500+ words of coherent discussion. I even managed some semblance of the 5-paragraph format I learned in school. Gods help me, I can't escape. I guess we'll see how this goes.
