Burned out and washed up?

Tweet

Hello all, remember me? Wow, this makes a change, a blog post that's not a photo prompt or a Friday flash!

I know, I know, I've been somewhat lacking when it comes to writing blog posts of late. I've been telling myself it's because I've been too busy. If I haven't been working on stuff for my teacher training course, I've been prepping for teaching sessions. If I'm not doing that, I'm writing Friday flashes, putting in some words on To Kill A Dead Man, planning the next book I'm going to write, or working on my PhD's literature review. Or, if I'm honest, I'm killing things in Azeroth on Warcraft.

It's all perfectly reasonable. I've got a lot on. But it's more than that. It seems that I get plenty of ideas for posts, and they're all entered into an 'Ideas' note I have in the Blog notebook in my Evernote app. And that's about as far as they go. Anyone who follows me on Twitter (@icypop) knows I waffle on about blog posts I think I'll write, or that I want to write...but then they never materialise. I think I have isolated the problem.

My creative drive appears to have shrunk to the size of a walnut. Therefore writing down the idea seems to satisfy that drive, and I no longer have an urge to finish writing the damned thing. Simply recording the idea was enough. It's an absolute wonder that I've even bothered to write this one! I tell myself that it's saving myself from publishing a load of crap on here but...nah.

Trouble is, the problem extends to more than just my (erratic) blog posts. It's also begun to extend to my fiction as well. I've got an Evernote notebook dedicated to Fiction, and I keep all my ideas for stories in separate notes. Right now, I've got thirty notes of ideas I'm yet to use. Sometimes it's because I'll have an idea I want to use, but then I have another idea I use instead, but the problem seems to be that once I've written the outline, I no longer have an urge to write the story itself. It's like my brain is stuck in 'summary mode'.

If I'm honest...it worries me. I see all of these blog posts and tweets about the work people are putting into their writing careers, and I feel like I'm just sitting on my hands watching the world pass me by. All the writers I know seem to be writing in every spare moment they have, while I'm finding excuses not to write.

So, I guess the question is...have I finally burned out?

Feeling Fear, aka Procrastination

Tweet I originally composed this entry while sat in a coffee shop just off Piccadilly Circus one rainy Monday evening. Yes, I wrote it with a purple fineliner, by hand, in a ringbound shorthand notebook. What can I say, it satisfies my inner Luddite. The purple ink was for my inner drag queen.

Anyway, I follow a very useful blog named Procrastinating Writers, designed to help writers overcome their inherent procrastination, and the whole thing got me thinking about how much I indulge in this particular artist's malady - and, more importantly, why.

I always told myself that I didn't write as often as I may have wished to because I didn't have enough time. I reasoned that if I had more time, I'd write all the time. Nonsense. It would have been incredibly easy to have simply spent less time messing about on Twitter, and used that time for writing instead. Now I actually have more time than I know what to do with and still I don't write.

I can only say it's because of two reasons. First, there is the matter of technique. I have the idea, but I'm unsure how to begin. Afraid of not doing justice to the idea, I then don't even try, and the idea scuttles off to hibernate in some dark, cobwebby recess of my imagination. Second, I just don't write in case anything I do write doesn't meet the ridiculously high standards that I set for myself.

I suppose it all comes down to fear, which is completely irrational since I'm fearless in so many other aspects of my life. Yet it is fear all the same, and it is this fear which I must conquer if I'm to progress down the writer's road further than the Inn of Indecision.

It's a few weeks early for resolutions, but now seems as good a time as any to start. I intend to stop being so afraid and simply get on with the thing I enjoy most - writing. And if it's not good enough? Well, that's what second drafts are for!

Who's with me?