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Hello ladies and gentlemen and supernatural beings.
We are on day….I don’t know what number because I totally lost track…but I do know we are about half way through April which means we are halfway through this insane blogging challenge called the A to Z Challenge and today’s letter is the letter “Q”.
Since I’ve become a published author, the number one question I get from family, friends, and friends of friends is “How do you do it?”, “How did you write an entire novel?”
And me being the dork that I am, I used answer with “Uh…just start typing?” with a BIG confused “duh!” written on my face in black marker.
It wasn’t until recently that I realized what those people were really asking was “How the heck do you find the self-motivation, self-discipline, and confidence required to even begin a task as intimidating as writing a novel, and then, how do you continue to harness those traits long enough to actually finish said novel?”
And the answer to that, my friend, is you quit making excuses.
I know a lot of artist. Probably 90% of my friends have what I call an artsy soul. But unfortunately only about 1% of them have what it takes to succeed. They are all very talented. Extremely talented. But most of them are too lazy to finish a single project. And finishing a project is only the first step. Once you finish it, you have to break down and rebuild it better. Then you have to polish it. Then you have to display it to a few critics and get feedback. Then you have to break in down and rebuild it again, taking the feedback into consideration… Most of my artsy friends don’t have the discipline to even complete the first step.
Their excuses?
“I’m waiting for inspiration” is the most common one.
“I can’t find my muse”, “My muse won’t work with me”, “my muse is dead”, “I’m creatively blocked”. – The second most common one I hear.
The third one? “I don’t have the time right now”.
Well honey, I understand. I used to believe I was plagued with writers block for a time. But you know what I’ve learned? There is no such thing as a creative block. I’ll repeat that; NO SUCH THING AS A CREATIVE BLOCK.
Inspiration doesn’t have legs or a car, it can’t come to you and it won’t come to you. You have to hunt it down with a rifle, hand grenade, and giant net.
As for the muse – she is a myth as fictional as the toothfairy. YOU are your muse. You have no one to blame but yourself, so stop pointing the finger at something that doesn’t even exist.
As for time, we all are only given 24 hours in a day. You won’t ever find more time or the right time. Such notion is ridiculous. You can only waste time. Time doesn’t stop. It doesn’t wait for you. Life keeps going whether you are ready for it or not and eventually you will run out of time, look back, and wish you had used your time better when you still had it in front of you, so why wait?
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You know what I realized? It takes me a year write a novel. It takes me few months to write a short story. That’s actually pretty slow. But I work on it every day. It’s not easy. If you think completing any work of art is supposed to be easy, you are dead wrong and you might be better off in a different career. Oh, and it doesn’t get any easier the more you do it either. Each new project has new challenges that you can’t always plan ahead for. It’s a journey. It’s a challenge. Every time, it’s a challenge.
Some days are fun, sure. Some days the words flow right out of me onto the page and I get a whole chapter or two done in one day. But other days I have to force myself to do it. I have to force myself to write. It’s painful and aggravating and the most I get out on those days is a paragraph or two if I’m lucky. Yes it sucks and you know what? It feels a lot like WORK instead of FUN. But hey…you want to be an artist for a living? Guess what? It’s your job now. IT IS WORK. If you only want to have fun being creative once in a while, then you’re a hobbyist and that is fine…if that is what you want. But if you want to be taken seriously, then you need to take your artWORK seriously.
Now here’s the secret. Oh yes, there is a secret. A good secret. Here it is: Those bad days when you can only manage to squeeze out a line or two? Embrace them. Don’t fear them. Don’t hate them. And don’t avoid them. Do your one or two lines for the day and be done. Don’t erase them. Don’t doubt their worth. Do them and then be done with it until tomorrow.
And here’s why: If you can write one or two lines a day…by the end of the year, you’ll be done. You’ll have a full manuscript. You’ll have completed the first step and you’ll have something to show for it. Trust me; this is always an amazing reward all in itself.
Here’s another secret…. That first draft? That first model? The first mark up? It’s going to suck. Big time. It’s always going to suck. And there is nothing in the world you can do about it. That’s why step two is to break it down and rebuild it better. But trust me, no matter how hard you try, you will not make it perfect the first time through. No one does. Never. It’s impossible. And the sooner you accept that fact, the sooner you can get over that fear of rejection and actually finish the damn thing.
I think that fear of not being good enough; of getting rejected by your peers and the critics is what holds a lot talented people back. Not the lack of inspiration or the lack of a muse or the lack time, but the fear of the very real possibility that we might suck and our work might be shit and it might be better to just waist time working at a “real” job then to be an artist.
Well here’s the good news about that: Number One, 90% of the time we are our own worst critics. And for that 10% chance when someone does totally bash your work and your feelings? Take it with a grain of salt and get over it.
And Number Two…No one has to see your sucky first draft but you! In fact, no one SHOULD be seeing that thing! It’s crap, like I said. No one’s seen the original first draft of Dark Heirloom but me. Because of step two. Because once I finished step one, I took red and pen, tore down my manuscript and re-built it better. Re-built into something that doesn’t suck quite so much.
The now published version of Dark Heirloom is probably…oh…I’d estimate it is version number 137ish?
And each time I re-wrote, it sucked a little less.
But you have to finish the initial project first. It’s like building a house. You can’t put up wall paper and lay carpeting until you’ve finished all the wiring and plumbing. And until you do that, the house is going to look like a mess. But you know it will beautiful once the walls are painted and the furniture is moved in.
And you have to quite your excuses. Got it? Good.
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Today I’m also a guest author over at Fiction Fascination. If you have a moment, please click on the link and check out my guest post. Thanks.
That’s all for now, see you tomorrow.
VvvV – vampire kisses!
J.D.
