The break over the holidays can officially be declared a success. For the first time in -- well, ever -- I was disciplined enough to actually step away from work for the full two weeks and dedicate the same number of hours each day to writing. I can say that not since my days painting in the loft studio overlooking 1st Avenue and the Cumberland River (before the Titans statdium, mind you) have I enjoyed, in essense, full days dedicated to art.
In that time, completed a 3500-word story and a 5000-word edit. If you knew anything about my writing struggle over the last few years, you'd know that one of these would have qualified as a huge accomplishment, but to have pulled off both -- unthinkable. Completed a story in less than a month has felt like a turning point. Finishing a satisfying story in fewer than 5000 words also feels like an important event, but I haven't wrapped my head around it yet. The finished edit to the other story, just proved that I still have the discipline to do the thankless part of this craft.
So, as this is a writing blog, I feel obligated to share what made this time successful. I wouldn't have thought much about it had I not been asked about my writing by an author recently moved to San Antonio.
In my response to him, I realized that I can be blind and stupid and slow to manage my emotions.
(In the interest of humor, I should stop there but I won't.)
No...I just related that I had never written a story until '06 when I first decided to begin writing seriously and professionally. I wrote and wrote, sucking every inch of the way, until in '08, I wrote my first good story for a contest, Spirit and Speck. It won honorable mention in the contest I entered it into and the rewrite got published in an online mag.
Enter emotions. Foolishly, but not entirely unexpectedly, I felt that I was unstoppable, that anything I wrote would knock people over. I had just begun. I wanted to show the world how great I was and that meant entering contests.
Not too quickly, after a series of better-than-average but not winning results in 24-hour contests, I learned that I'm not at my best when I write quickly, that my strength comes from my passion and ideas, not my speed. I believe that the contest stage also damaged my writing psyche. Now, instead of thinking entirely about the story, I found myself thinking more than I ever had about people's reactions to my work, as if I had people waiting for my next work. I believe it took finally completing Forever By His Side, the 15k work that took me a year and a half to finish, to bring me back to my right artistic mind. But it wasn't until the two weeks at the end of 2011 that I was able to use that new, smarter energy to some productive end.
For the first time since before Sprit and Speck, I feel like an artist. And that HAS to continue to be what it's all about. It just sucks that it took me so long to get back to this point.
