Rough and Ready

I think Sloan and I are in a similar place creatively speaking. We keep blogging on writer's ennui and reenergizing ourselves and tips and tricks for getting your muse off her lazy ass and back to work.

I'M NOT PAYING YOU TO EAT BON BONS AND WATCH SOAPS, CHICK.

That would be my muse I'm shrieking at, not Sloan (who I'm sure is in the shower right this very minute thinking writerly thoughts as she gropes for the soap).

So I reached a turning point last week.

For the last year (it started in December '09 to be honest) I've been hanging on by my fingernails. I had a blazingly productive year in 2009, but the downside of that was I felt that I needed to do really different stuff in 2010. So I did. I did short stories and fantasy and socio-political paranormal and edgy contemporary romance...and none of it was particularly easy, but I felt like I really needed to stretch and prove myself. And that my readers deserved that.

(Polite applause from said readers in the gallery.)

So I did just that -- to my satisfaction at least -- but the end result was that I'm done experimenting for a while.

(Much more enthusiastic applause from said readers in the said gallery.)

Next year I'm strictly writing projects that entertain me. And if every flipping book is about a cop and a writer, so be it.

Well, they won't all be cops and writers because I have seen the future and it is booked. Yeah, in this bright and fierce spirit of defiance I took a look at next year's schedule and deflated like a hot balloon as I realized A - I'm booked solidly, B - I don't get to take the two or three months off at the start of the year that I had planned to take.

Well, I mean I could, but there is that thing called a mortgage.

What to do, what to do. I'd been telling myself for months I could just...hold...on until...January and then I realized I was talking about January 2012.

A funny thing happened on the way to my nervous breakdown...I rediscovered the joy of a rough draft. I'm not saying there's not a lot of merit in taking showers or vacuuming or driving or walking (I do all these things -- and may I add gardening and splashing in the wading pool to the list of idea generators?), but for me nothing beats the old fashioned joy of writing a shitty first draft.

I mean hammer something, ANYTHING down. Get some semblance of a rough draft down and then move on to the next one. Let the first sit for a bit while you're disgracing yourself with the next project. Then start filling in the blanks of the first trainwreck, and lo! It ain't nearly as bad as you thought. And even if it is (and parts of it are -- OUCH) it still gives a foundation and that foundation is all you need to regain your creative footing.

In the past three weeks I've hammered out three horrible rough drafts, and all of them are now turning into something...well, dare I say it? something pretty good. I've almost rediscovered my joy of writing. Or at least my joy of finishing projects.

Inevitably, once you start to write, ideas will -- must -- come. Maybe they're not brilliant ideas, but from these first basic acorns do mighty oaks spring. Sometimes they shortly after topple over and plough you into the earth but the point is ideas need fertile ground in which to germinate, so you have to spread the manure before you can get the flowers.

Anyway, this, er, shit is working. It's ugly and rough but it's effective, and weirdly enough I'm remembering what it is I love about writing. And no, it's not being up to my elbows in molten crap. It's what springs from the molten crap.

Creativity requires letting go. Letting go of your fear that people won't like what you're doing, that you will be criticized, that this won't be as good as that, that you will fail. Worst of all, that you will disappoint yourself.

The truth is, you only really disappoint yourself when you fail to try. And none of the other even matters. What matters is that you fulfill your creative imperative. You're a storyteller. You have stories to tell.

Tell. Your. Stories.

Speaking of which...time to get back to it. I have some really horrible writing to get done today.