aka; ‘It’s not you, it’s me’

Quite often I have to take a moment to appre­ci­ate how lit­tle writ­ing I get done. For some­one who boasts of being an aspir­ing author and cat­e­gorises it as some­what of a modus operandi, I find myself liv­ing an ironic exis­tence. If a moun­tain climber never soared to any height but that of his local park’s jun­gle gym, I doubt he could clas­sify him­self as such — or even as an aspir­ing such. There­fore, I guess I find myself curl­ing the cor­ner of my mouth into some form of a wry smile when­ever I think about it hap­pen­ing (the ‘it’ being pub­li­ca­tion, of course). Don’t get me wrong, I don’t believe it can’t hap­pen, or will for that mat­ter never hap­pen. I just won­der how long it’s going to take me. Authors write, and write, and write — it takes them years to get some­thing on a shelf and that comes from not just hav­ing issues in get­ting the damn novel fin­ished, but in just find­ing a good agent, and some­one who wants to pub­lish it. But what about me? How long will it take some­one like me who, for want of a bet­ter euphemism, is going at a rather unpro­duc­tive snail’s pace.

Of course there are those who do draft, after draft, after draft and four years down the line, are just about ready to try tak­ing that quad-annum per­fectly formed tran­script to an agent. It’s going to be per­fect (in the author’s mind) but what if that four years has just been spent detail­ing and re-polishing a book that just doesn’t cut it? One could say, well at least they are doing some­thing and I give kudos to that because, as I men­tioned prior, it’s cur­rently more than I can feel accom­plished about.

For what it’s worth, I think the pre­vi­ous para­graph is just an exam­ple of my lack of com­mit­ment to one, sin­gle, story. I am writ­ing a book, but I don’t want it to take up to much of my life. Is it sup­posed too? And I don’t mean in a day-to-day form, I mean in a yearly — decade-y sense. I began writ­ing ‘Ran Red in Feb­ru­ary 2009 and I want it will be fin­ished by Feb­ru­ary 2010. Come hell or dan­ger­ously high water I will have a fin­ished draft that needs a re-visit and a going through of the edit­ing machine. But after that?

Then I’ll start some­thing new and fresh and dif­fer­ent. But of course, before all of that, I still have to actu­ally write, which means time, which means (though I am using time now to write this, grant me that) actu­ally stand­ing up for the impor­tance of pretty much my sin­gle goal in life at the moment — writ­ing a book; becom­ing an author of more than just short sto­ries and sar­cas­tic one-liners on com­ment threads. I have to take, steal, find, nur­ture, snare some me (writ­ing) time and for realz. Not just a notion to com­mit the wheels to motion and get the juices flowin’, but actual locked-in, eyes-focused on the words time.

Some­thing I’ve always had an issue with is tak­ing time for me and not feel­ing like I am shirk­ing my respon­si­bil­i­ties, being self­ish and/or act­ing anti-socially towards my fam­ily. When aligned with the fact that my fam­ily does under­stand, I have to imag­ine it’s more than just a tem­po­ral thing, but more­over — per­haps — an issue I have always had; fam­ily or no. When I con­front myself with this fact: that I am try­ing to be some­thing which, by its nature, requires iso­la­tion at times, and yet I have issues with free­ing myself of not hav­ing to be there at all times, I have to find that wry smile. Because it’s ridicu­lous, I am my own worst enemy.

I guess that’s it in a nut­shell. It’s not find­ing the time; it’s not forc­ing myself to cre­ate a pocket where I can van­ish with it being (O)ll (K)orrect, it’s just me and my own, unfounded, guilt com­plex. Does that mean that ulti­mately I am a writer aimed for dis­as­ter, or a flawed indi­vid­ual who just hap­pens to have a spe­cific issue that doesn’t help such an iso­lated career path? Well, we’re all fucked up in one way or another, but at least with it being an emo­tional… no, that’s not right. With it being a trait, or even an infected-algorithm, I can try and change things. I’m an adap­tive indi­vid­ual, and I’m per­cep­tive — at least with oth­ers, though per­haps with my own self not so much as I might have thought.

To bet­ter take on this bat­tle of ‘me time’ and by exten­sion, any time I wish to write, or per­haps do any­thing for me and me alone, I need to fine-tune my strat­egy and look more at it more from the inside. Cre­at­ing some­thing as pli­able as the oppor­tu­nity to sit down and cre­ate, I need to exclude all exte­rior influ­ences and not think of it as pres­sure from with­out not to go do it, but the pres­sure from within that I can go do it. It is fath­omable that I can teach myself to do this with­out feel­ing like its not allowed, that by nature it’s self­ish and igno­rant of those around me.

Pur­su­ing an accom­plish­ment such as writ­ing is some­thing a lot of peo­ple don’t under­stand. It’s less impact­ing to those around you and the world at large, but it’s one every artist suf­fers with. It’s some­what of a self­ish ideal to aim for, but a noble one. There’s noth­ing wrong with want­ing to do some­thing you are drawn towards, and it helps to have those around you who under­stand. My fam­ily under­stands this in me, and my need to do it. “It’s OK!” They say… I just think in the end, I was the only one who didn’t know it.