With all the things going on in my personal life, right now, writing has been next to impossible. Still, my brain is marinating on the ideas I want to put down and if I can come out of this okay, I think that the stuff ahead will actually benefit from this delay.
While anxiety kills my focus and thus, my creative output, my overactive imagination doesn’t just stop working and the anxiety and stress kind of turn into brain steroids. I just can’t take the ideas and put them into words in a proper way. I can, however, keep taking a ton of notes to sort through and massage into something later.
I’m trying to look at the silver lining here. I feel like shit, to be honest, but outside of the things I can’t control, some of this is probably my fault because I have pushed myself so fucking hard since publishing Dan the Destructor in January of last year. Since then, that book has spawned four sequels, and I have done all of this while also working a very time consuming real job, also in a creative field. A job, that frankly, takes a lot out of me, which shouldn’t, but nothing there is done in an organized or sensible way. Put all of this together, though, and it just adds more stress on top of my current big problem, which I’ll get to in a second.
In regards to writing, I pushed myself so hard because of a few reasons.
The first being that I had hoped that it might be a way out of my strenuous real job and that it might make me enough money to afford a better living situation that would be a better environment for me to write in. My job and living situation haven’t been ideal for what I’ve wanted to achieve for quite some time, but these aren’t things that I can change overnight.
The other reasons I pushed myself so hard was because I was incredibly motivated by the momentum I started to build, much sooner than I thought possible. I wanted to give those who enjoyed my books, even more to sink their teeth into. I also didn’t want them to have to wait too long, as I hate waiting for things when I’m a fan. But also, I wanted to keep the momentum going strong while building my own platform and reach so that I could help lift up others in similar situations to mine.
Plus, when the ideas come to me so fast, I can’t dilly dally. I have to get them onto paper and move on to the next ones. In the past, sitting on an idea or concept too long has caused me to lose interest because I eventually become hyper-focused on other ideas.
Getting to my current big problem: for those that don’t know, I am being pushed out of my home. Why? Well, my landlord can no longer afford where she is living, and she has to move into the place I’ve been renting for thirteen years. But I’m not mad at her, I get it. Her situation is the same as mine, as regular working people are being pushed into potential homelessness by a series of strange circumstances in the State of Florida.
Trying to look at that silver lining again, I have needed a change of environment for awhile. I had become too comfortable in a place that wasn’t best for me, but that also had to do with how cheap my rent was compared to those around me. I was very lucky (and grateful for that) for a long time. But multiple asshole neighbors caused a lot of problems that made it hard to live there at times. Ironically enough, they all left in recent months and I thought that I might actually (finally) be in a good situation to focus on writing and other creative avenues I need to explore in an effort to further “build my brand”.
So, a lot may happen today that shapes what my future is going to be. Without getting into personal details, I feel like today is a “make or break” situation. Ultimately, I just hope that I get what I need to help me through this phase of change. With that, I hope that it leads to me getting into a place that will allow me to have peace of mind again, because I want nothing more than getting back to work on the stuff that truly makes me happy, my stories.
But, these are things I cannot fully control.
Don't feel too bad if you can't get everything the way you want it, the first time. J.R.R. Tolkien had many stories written down in notebooks and spirals, some in outlines, some with partial dialogue, and some finished. He would work on these stories, often going from one to another, then back to the first, then on to another story, until he had finished them. Some of them he never finished before he died. That's how much he wrote.
Godspeed my friend. Whatever life throws at you, trust that you'll come out on the other end, and we'll be here. Everyone works at their own pace, something I'm trying to get through my young and impatient skull lol, so don't flog yourself too hard if you have to step back and get things in order.