Getting off my fraking butt

My working hours are insane. Physical therapy exercises take up lunch. By the time I get home, I can barely cook a meal, clean the apartment (goddamn, how is it that there's always more dirt??) and play with the cat before I succumb to an hour on the couch staring at the wall, then crawl into bed.

However, after my team's manager decided to trash not one but all of the public information documents I'd spent eight days writing, I've had it.

The reason I've never pursued writing is simple -- I'm terrified of failure. Imagine finding out that you can't do the one thing you love, either because you're bloody incompetent or you're just incapable of turning a dream into reality. I don't know what I'd do if I tried to write and discovered it wasn't going to happen...but not-writing guarantees the outcome, doesn't it?

This isn't the best time to begin. I really do work at least five to 10 hours more per week than I'm supposed to (thank you, American work ethic) -- which may not sound like much, but it drains me just enough to dull my appetite for voluntary evening labor. Nonetheless, I'm doing three things, starting yesterday:

1. Editing my novel page-by-page so I can reach where I left off with a renewed understanding of my characters and a reinvigorated desire to finish it
2. Thinking long and hard about where to go from here, be it journalism school or unpaid internships. The prospects seem daunting now, what with CB's looming postdoc, our desire to buy a home sometime before we turn 80, and the fact that I know nothing about freelancing...but I have one year to educate myself as much as I can so I'm positioned to get started when CB returns. Given my daily schedule, one year will be cutting it close.
3. Pitch when I can, where I can. I may not have time to build a flourishing freelance career now, but I can lay the groundwork. I started tonight by contacting a struggling local monthly looking for an editor -- I figure if they need an editor, they might need a writer or two, as well. The worst that happens is they ignore me, right? If they say no, I'll just try harder.

I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I need to give writing my all before I throw in the towel and settle for a soul-sucking career in public outreach. I'd like nothing more than to find a part-time job in the next three years that lets me spend the other 20+ hours per week pitching, writing, editing, whatever. How do I get there? Not sure. I'm sure I won't be nearly so motivated by the end of this week, as I'm scheduled to work 50+ hours between tomorrow and Saturday (no, I'm really not exaggerating). Still, if I can't push through to the other side, I'll look back years from now and wonder what might have been. This isn't going to happen overnight, but it has to start sometime. It might as well be now, even if all I can do is take the seed out of its envelope and look for a suitable planting site.

Dubrovnik in the gloaming

No writing tonight -- I'm a little burned out for no good reason. I blame the weather: it is sunny outside, but it is also cold enough for our toes to turn white on bike rides. Evil, evil northern climates.

I hit 40,000 words today on the novel -- a milestone both exciting and frightening. That's all I'm going to say.

I'll regale you with a few more photos, then I'm off to bed. More interesting posts coming soon!

Fact, not fiction, for the first time in years.

DCFC lyrics have been running through my head lately, a sure sign that I'm in transition. Certain music accompanies me whenever I am on a physical or mental journey, and Death Cab's songs have been close companions since I discovered them seven years ago.

I'm not even sure where to begin. I find myself at a loss for words when people ask -- as they inevitably do -- what I'm up to these days. Depending on your perspective, I'm either taking a risk to pursue a dream, or wasting time when I should be focused on long-term plans. Realistically, I feel somewhere in between, but it's difficult to justify the big "U" (that's unemployed) to fast-track students here who haven't paused for breath since completing their A-levels.

My degree course wrapped up at the end of August, and I spent September in a pleasant blur, hosting my family when it came to visit, moving to Oxford, leaving for Croatia. I returned to learn that I'd done remarkably well in the program, although whether or not that will have any tangible benefits remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I'm happy that it went well, and happier still that the end result was good in spite of my very aberrant decision to turn it in a week early. AKA, *when I still had time to make it PERFECT!* Hopefully, this marks the beginning of a new relationship with perfectionism, in which I grow comfortable with finishing things when I feel done instead of scouring them for every last error, when the amount of time I spend working is too great to justify the tiny improvements I make.

So, what am I up to now? I've spent the last two weeks working from home, which means I wake up around 7:30, brew a pot of coffee, and sit down at the table by 10:00 to write. Part of me hesitates to even talk about this, because I'm afraid I'll jinx it or wind up sounding like a major flake (stupid social pressure), but there you go. I have three months on my hands with no job prospects in sight and no real way to apply for any that arise: with Christmas travel, I can't exactly take a position now. ("Gee, thanks so much for the job! I'll be gone from December 6th until mid-January, okay?") School is finished, for now and possibly forever. (Although I can't really think about the finality yet.) Volunteer opportunities are sparse. So, with some much needed support from Coalescent Boy, I'm writing a novel.

Yeah, I'm serious.

It's not a great story. At this point, I'm just hoping it will be good enough for me to do something with after I finish the second draft, even if that means showing it to friends and then sticking it in a drawer. The goal at this point is simply to begin writing, to develop a daily habit, and to understand what kind of schedule I'm going to need if I want to keep writing for life. When I'm not writing, I'm mulling over what comes next, which generally means weighing the horrendously difficult "stay in the UK/go back to Seattle" decision looming in January. But for at least a few months, I'm trying out how it feels to say "I'm a writer." (It feels freaky.)

Any illusions I had about being the next great American author have been discarded, but there's a certain amount of freedom in accepting one's capabilities for what they are. I have no idea how I'm going to milk 150,000 words out of the ideas in my head -- I'm at 19,000 right now, and that already feels monumental -- but something tells me that finishing one will make it easier to start another. Think of this as a test book. Does that mean it's a throwaway? No -- I still nurture a hope that it might be publishable with a regional press, but I am starting to believe that I won't be crushed if it doesn't happen. I'll just sit back in front of the computer and start again.

There you go. I'm writing. I'm reflecting. I'm ignoring well-intended students and staff who say, "Oh...have you tried looking for a job, though?" or, "You know, there's a good PhD program in X Department." I'm trying not to think about what I should be doing to get back into the environmental world where I know I belong. I'll get there. This just isn't the place to do it, which means I probably shouldn't expend my energy fretting over nonexistent opportunities.

I've been deliberating whether to make this a matter of public record, partially because, as I mentioned, I still have qualms about saying "I'm writing" as if that's a valid adult activity. The adult part of my brain keeps muttering about how I should be doing something I know I'm good at, something safe, like more academic research. But there's a kid inside, too, and she's jabbing at the adult with her pen, insisting the adult see that writing is valid, is legitimate, is worthwhile. That kid has secret dreams she's nurtured for the last decade or two, ambitions she isn't quite willing to speak aloud. The good thing, I suppose, is that the adult in me shares those dreams, too.

So, here we go. 2000 words per day; one day off per week, a few more when I'm traveling. Draft by end of January/early February. Revisions in early March. Reviews by kindhearted people in the spring. Redraft over the summer, if readers deem it worth redrafting, and then we'll see what happens. Maybe nothing. At the very least, it's a stepping-stone for future work. At most? Well, there's where the dreaming comes into play.

Headbutting the creative process

The wedding scrapbook, she is actually coming together.

I've spent three or four hours cross-legged behind mounds of photo tape, cardstock, decorative sticky-things and glitter pens, and I haven't lost my mind yet. Better still, the scrapbook doesn't look like the creation of a 4 year-old child -- although those 4 year-old concoctions often bodyslam what I can produce. I'm four pages into it, and I'm trying not to feel too smug about the fact that I can layer things in pretty patterns. This marks significant progress from my initial foray into a crafts store four weeks ago, when I suddenly started quivering like a spooked horse, eyes rolling and nostrils flaring as I confronted unending rows of brads and stencils. Now, I'm glad I checked my original instinct to bolt back out the door towards my familiar, cluttered world.

My final product won't win any highbrow scrapbook awards (yes, there are people who pursue such accomplishments), but it won't be something I hastily kick under the nearest piece of furniture when friends or relatives visit.

The other, technically more important creation is moldering in the grave. My ambitious plans to write a novel this summer have turned into dimming hopes of completing half a chapter. I think I'm going to be a late-blooming author. I have this uncanny knack of being able to come up with great ideas, which I promptly fail to develop or follow-through for more than a few pages. Plots I can do, at least beginnings and ends. Middle ground and character development? Well, it would help if I weren't hell-bent on writing the Great American Novel, which makes anything I do seem sub-par.

Writing is a bitch. Anyone who states otherwise is lying to you. Love it I may, but it doth make my head hurt.