My husband has challenged me to write for one hour per day, in an effort to hone my skills. Mainly, I think it's because he's tired of listening to me moan about how I don't know what to do with my life...but he seems to think that I am actually a fairly good writer and that I should be actively pursuing what he sees as God-given talent...
My grandmother told me the same thing when I was ten...this after starting a story about being a soldier in World War I...a story that I never finished, because with her praise, I became paralyzed by the thought of continuing...what if the rest of the story wasn't as good as the beginning?
And so I sit here, staring at the screen, waiting for some sort of inspiration to hit me...after delaying the start of my "hour" for about as long as possible...I got the kids off to school, Brian off to work, the dog walked, the kitchen cleaned, laundry taken care of...each time the thought started to cross my mind, "um, you should probably head to the computer now", I found another small task that needed to be completed...
Brian thinks I'm afraid of failure. And of success.
Which kind of makes me crazy, don't you think?
How can you be afraid of both at the same time?
It's not like I've never written anything before...page after page of bad (and sometimes outright depressing) poetry while I dealt with many issues from my childhood, short little stories for the kids...journal after journal since I was a kid myself...and then there's this blog...I've been doing this for a couple of years now...I've written articles for on-line magazines...technically, I'm a published author...
But the weight of "what-if-I'm-not-good-enough?" sends me into enough of an emotional tail spin that it's just easier to sit and play Bejeweled Blitz on the computer...
And when your husband and several of your friends are really good writers, it makes the pressure (at least in my own mind) even worse...
So the question is, do I have what it takes to actually see this thing through? I know that many people in my life, both past and present, have this idea that I'm a take-no-prisoners-don't-get-in-my-effing-way kind of person, but in reality? It's an act. I'm more likely to curl into a ball and beat myself up until I believe that I'm not any good at anything and that I never will be...that ugly voice has been with me since I was six years old and no matter how many times I've tried to shut her up and out, she keeps finding a way back into my head...
I keep telling my girls to "find their power" when they come to me whining about something that one of their brothers did (usually kicking them off the computer or the television)...I'm trying to take my own advice...because just for once, I want to finish what I start and finally kick that nasty bitch inside my head out so that she's never able to come back in...
How did you do? Do you manage to write for an hour every day?
ReplyDeleteI understand that feeling of being paralysed by praise and being afraid as a writer that there is nothing behind a really good beginning. It's always encouraging to hear the same from another writer.