Waah, waaah, the internet is picking on me. Which is to say, a bunch of really smart people have offered really smart advice to whomever crosses their feeds generally, and it’s been so specific to the problems I’ve been having with writing lately that not only do I Feel Seen, I’m at the “I came out here to have a good time and now I’m feeling personally attacked” level of seen, ha.
So what’s the good advice?
Well, let’s start with this one, by Maggie Stiefvater.
There’s a video, too, but I’ll save that for our Friday video this week, so tune in tomorrow to watch “The drawing advice that changed my life”.
Basically, it boils down to this: I’m running in circles wishing I could write everything at once, and I’ve let myself get so paralysed by the decision of WHAT TO WORK ON NEXT that I’m just… not writing.
Part of that is decision paralysis, and part of that is just exactly what Maggie says: obsession is easier than focus. When you’re obsessed with an idea or a concept or a project, working on it isn’t work. It’s easy. Time flies by. I lost two weeks in February to researching book boxes, and sure, those two weeks have now borne fruit because we have A Fox Of Storms And Starlight Fan Kits, with Fan Kits for other Inkprint Press books on the way, but fundamentally that was a shiny distraction, a way to work on writing without actually committing to write something.
Because no matter what I sit down to work on right now, it feels like the wrong thing, which is ridiculous, because there’s no right thing to be working on, which means there’s no wrong thing either. I’m like the person in the video tomorrow, ping-ponging between ideas without actually DOING anything, thinking and brainstorming and planning instead of… focusing.
Yep. Focus is much, much harder than obsession.
Dang it all.
You know the writers (illustrators, artists, musicians…) who are all, “You should sit down and write regularly even if you don’t feel like it because this is your job, so do it”?
Yeah.
I’ll be honest. That sounded great – in theory. But this is really the first time that I’ve come up against a drywall of no inspiration (no obsession), and am realising what it actually looks like to be in the profession of a writer.
If I want this writing thing to work, I knew I’d eventually need to learn to focus. In a vague, amorphous, yeah yeah sometime but maybe this motivation will just carry me on forever and I’ll be lucky kind of way.
Turns out, the time to learn to focus well is now.
Drat.