Inspired by , but pointed at several of you:

I’ve told you a secret…or several.

Tell me how you reacted to my secrets. Why?

All comments will be screened to protect my secrets and any you all might divulge.

Self-sabotage is an ugly habit of mine. In the past year, I’ve set myself up to write my book and simultaneously set myself to fail at it. I set myself times and places, and require of me a word count. I would express that as, for instance, “I have to write 1,000 words daily.”

When life overwhelmed me and I was exhausted, I stalled out. Restarting, I lowered the bar. “I have to write 500 words daily.”

And stalled out after a while.

Later: “I have to sit down and write for an hour.”

Stalled.

Sometimes this would happen while I was updating LJ frequently and long-windedly. W, as they say, TF?

This weekend I realized one of the things they all had in common. They all begin, “I have to…”.

I have to fix the truck.
I have to cook tonight.
I have to take care of X.
I have to clean Y.
I have to have my prostate examined by a sturdy-fingered bricklayer.
I have to get that hemmeroid lanced.

I wonder why I haven’t been enjoying myself. No, not really. I’ve lumped my JoyChoice in with all the “gottas” of my life, of which there are many. This weekend, I tried out a new one:

“I have to sit down and write, and enjoy it.”

Hm. Something wrong there….

How about this. “I get to, three days at least each week, sit down to write on something creative — the book by choice, but a short story or some such is fine — and the only goal in doing so is, when I am done, I feel that I have exerted good effort and, ideally, wrote something that I am pleased to have written.”

It’s a bit long, but it isn’t a “gotta”, it’s a “I get to”. It is a very low expectation, which permits exceeding it, eventually regularly. IT IS NOT QUANTIFIABLE. I will be the only person who can say I succeeded or failed.

Do I want the book done? Oh, yes. Quickly? Yes’m. Published? Yup.

But, I discovered a few weeks ago, those aren’t what I want most. What I want most is to have written, and to be pleased that I did.

Right thinking –> Right action –> Right being –> Right thinking

Writer’s Weekend was too dense an experience to relate. However:

This last year I have been doubting the worth of my pursuing my writing. Not my need to do so, but the worth to others of my doing so. I had someone interested in reading it, but I had spoken to him, and chatted and…I can be somewhat charming.

I found that I believed, somewhere deep where I don’t look, that my writing and ideas have no merit, that I had merely used my super-power of Charming Mind Control to get someone to like me well enough to want to look at my book.

Okay. We’re all broken and stupid in places. This would be one of mine.

I pitched my book to another agent this weekend, whom I’ll call Ian. Ian did not smile warmly at me. He did not seem to enjoy talking to me. He was not entranced by my winning smile and clever speech. Worse, I was at my lowest ebb, stuttering, telling things out of sequence, stalling out and ruining my pace…I even forgot my book’s name, as well as the protagonist’s.

First he explained that he was a small house on purpose; he could be picky as hell, and he was, and get away with it. He selected only what he felt had genuine merit, not merely what would sell, and he liked it that way.

He’d like to see the first three chapters and a synopsis at my earliest convenience.

I did that without my charm.

Okay, the idea has merit. I know my writing frequently does. I can feel my self-doubt (Imposter’s Syndrome) melting away. Good.

I’ve an editor who asked for the same thing, and I’m pretty certain I failed to charm her, as well.

Well, then.

Michael is working his first job, has a transportation-level bicycle, and is doing well.

Shannon has been hired at a local business school as a teacher.

Last weekend we worked our first landscaping job. Michael & I moved 10 tons of gravel. No exaggeration.

Writer’s Weekend in two days. I have one and a half books to pitch, none written, plus one from last year, half written. I have no plans for how I’ll find more time each day to do what needs doing; just hope and intention.

The weather is beautiful. Wish you were here–

For the past few weeks, life has been uptempoed and I’ve been barely writing. Tonight I determined I would do something about that. No word goals. Just time at keyboard. That was the plan.

I spent ten minutes staring at the screen, unable to find anything to add to it. This. Has never. Happened to me. Ever.

(Oh, don’t worry, you’re tired, this happens to lots of men. Well, it doesn’t happen to me.)

Okay. Okay. I know how my brain works. If I talk this out, I’ll get through it. So I typed my issues onto the screen. I was not, it seems, a writer. Writers do this and that and know the other and so forth. All I had going for me was…well, all of that. Except I was sure I didn’t. But I saw the words on the screen saying I did, and if someone writes it, it must be true.

But I wasn’t a writer, so I didn’t have anything to write.

Deep breath. Calm down. I gave me platitudes.

“Don’t write it right, write it down.”

“Write one true thing.”

“Don’t write the book. Don’t write the chapter. Don’t write the paragraph. Write the sentence.”

One true sentence, written badly. I could do that.

…

No, I couldn’t.

I looked at the two pages of degradation of my character, and realized I could…but I still couldn’t.

Okay, pare it down some more. Write one true word. Badly.

I wrote, “I”.

I stared at it. It didn’t seem to do much for the book. 79,000 just like it, and I’d have something.

So, I got one word. Write two words.

“I felt”.

I heard me take a breath to suggest three, and the third one came out with a sob, and the screen washed away in fear and guilt and anger and poured down my face and arms and into my hands and I wrote paragraphs.

It took me 45 minutes to write not quite 100 words. I’ll do another 100 tomorrow. If this is how it has to go, then this is how it’ll go. I stick with this, I’ll have a first draft in less than two years.

Okay.

Michael is as complete in HS as he will be; he enters college shortly
Shannon is laid off
I am over my head at work, but moving through it
I am unexpectedly speaking my mind, my needs, my wishes…all the time, and non-toxically.

back to pedalling quickly–