Getting Committed: Ending My Love Affair with Writing
Stop me if you've heard this before: You get an idea on your drive from work or in the shower or before you go to bed. You open the notes app and type a quick blurb about your idea that gets you all excited. Later, as the idea plagues your mind and inhabits your daydreams, you start a Pinterest board and side blog on Tumblr to collect all of the aesthetically pleasing images of the characters' appearances and dark, brooding quotes that relate to them.
Soon, these characters go from Flat Stanley to Fancy Nancy and you know everything about them. And I mean everything. From their favorite food to their least favorite activity to do on a Tuesday morning, you have spent countless hours developing every aspect of them, telling yourself that you have to for the sake of the story you're going to write... eventually.
This was me for about 3 years up until a week ago. To give a little back story, I tried to enter a short story contest when I was a high school sophomore. Tried, because I misread the time zone for the deadline and missed the cut off. So, there I was, 16 and insecure like everyone else, but now I had this idea, this story that I wanted to expand into a book. Alas, life buried that idea beneath my battle with anxiety and my need to have everything in my future set in stone. I had unconsciously decided (whether it was due to my fear of risk-taking or my own self-doubt or a combination of both) to put writing on the back burner. "I'll do it as a side hustle," I told myself.
Flash forward to my first quarter in undergrad and a lovely angel in the form of my English teacher kicks me out of my comfort zone (and believe you me my comfort zone was paradise; there were throw pillows and everything). After a brief emotional break down, I decided to be honest with myself. Writing was where I truly felt my voice was clearest and best expressed. So, I decided to embrace being a writer; but I approached this new identity cautiously with a meter stick. I took my first writing classes, all the while with that old idea popping back up time and again.
And still I lied to myself. I made excuse after excuse, aesthetic board after aesthetic board, character profile after character profile. I watched countless vlogs about writing, read countless blogs about writing, pinned, reblogged, and saved tips and quotes about writing. I did everything... except write.
And then summer came. Summer with its carefree days and endless nights and loads and loads of free time. Free time: the perfect breeding ground for procrastination. So, instead of writing, you guessed it, I didn't write. I read. I read books recommended to me by my teachers that they claimed all writers needed to read, so I tricked myself into thinking I was working hard, sharpening my eye for technique.
After finishing all the recommendations and pouring over and worshiping the intricate detail, elegant use of language, innovative characters, I felt... empty. Here I was praising these authors for their skill, when I could be doing the same thing. So, I took a long, hard look in the mirror and a long, hard look at the blank page and my English teacher's words came back to me,
"Writers are just writers. They just write."
And so I wrote.
I decided to revisit my short story from three years ago and rework the entire thing. It was incredibly liberating, like fresh air after being underwater. I was writing and reading (surprise surprise you can do both) and I finally got a hold of a book I'd been eyeing, Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, an epic, layered tale of magic and exploration of identity about someone who looked like me by someone who looked like me.
Before I knew it, I was watching all of Adeyemi's interviews with a childlike wonder. That could be me. That could be me. This ignited a new flame that not only pushed me to write, but to write with purpose, with a goal in mind.
During my deep-dive into all things Tomi Adyemi, I came across one of her YouTube videos on how to make 2018 my best writing year that took my childlike wonder and turned it into a relentless drive to set specific, tangible goals and execute a concrete plan of action to achieve those goals. I realized that we tend to set goals, but fail to include a plan that gets us to those goals. We want to get to the Bahamas without a map.
This lead me back to one of my favorite writing vloggers, Jenna Moreci. I had been feeling stuck in my story and daunted by all the research I had to do. I was just casually watching her videos one day, because she's hilarious and the writing tips are so so helpful, when, in one video, she explained her outlining method. She pulled out a giant board covered in sticky notes and suddenly things became crystal clear. I immediately texted my mom, who was at the store, asking if she could pick up a board and some sticky notes.
The visual and tangible element of writing plot points and arranging them in whatever order I needed opened a new door for me that looked like a wall before.
I thought I was serious before, but I know without a doubt I'm serious now. I am writing a book. I am going to be vocal about it. I am going to own it. I am going to finish it. I have set deadlines for myself and I will make those deadlines. This idea I've had for three years will become reality, not because I hope it will, but because I am actively putting in the work to make it happen.
