When procrastination and struggle give way to success, what do we make of it?
I started writing my third novel nine days ago on September 2. I've written something every day since I started. My initial commitment was to at least 250 words (the equivalent of one page) every day, but it turns out my average output has been between 600 and 800 words a day. I've got 33 pages written, and I'm more than halfway through chapter three.
What the hell is wrong with me? I've never worked this quickly on my writing, ever, not even when I was single in college and writing for two hours every night. I thought I was one of those notoriously slow writers who takes years to complete novels. What if it turns out I was just lazy and unmotivated?
I think part of it is what I've discovered about the process of writing. Instead of outlining a detailed plot and then translating that outline into prose, I'm simply showing up to the scene and observing what happens. In the space of 30 pages, I've made at least 30 new discoveries about characters, plots, subplots, secrets, surprises, almost as many as I created in my initial planning outline, and that background work took almost two months.
Could it be that I've discovered my own key to creativity? I do know this; I've started out this semester (I'm a college Philosophy professor for those of you who don't know me well) determined to manage my work time more effectively so that I don't have so much work to do on nights and weekends. We're only four weeks into the semester, but so far, that's working well for me, and it gives me more time to write.
But I can't help but think that perhaps some of this has to do with maturity and experience. I have, after all, completed writing two novels, and while it's hardly prolific, if I had a dollar for every time someone told me they had an idea for a book but never took the time to write it...well, I'd have enough money to quit my job and write full-time. I'm not fighting the demons of doubt any longer; I know this is something I'm capable of doing.
There's something else at work here also, though. I really thought, sincerely believed, that the second book, The Spring of Llanfyllin, was good enough to at least get a read from an agent. After a year of trying, my results were a couple dozen polite rejections and at least as many unreturned email inquiries. Does that mean my book wasn't good enough? I don't think so. But whatever professionals are looking to sell, this evidently doesn't fit in that niche.
So what now? I still believe in the book, so I'm going back down the route of self-publishing as well as self-marketing and self-promotion. I'm good with that. No one believes in this book more than I do, so who better to sell it than me? But the professional reception has also set me free in that I no longer need to worry about whether agents or publishers will like what I've written. The only audience that matters, at least in these initial creative stages, is me. If any of my books reach an audience, even just a handful of family and friends, and they enjoy the experience of reading them, haven't I succeeded?
My success as a writer no longer depends on sales or income to validate what I want to do as a writer. Freed from the pressures of publishing and the desire for wealth as a reward, I can finally be the writer I've always wanted to be, and I'm telling another story that exists primarily because I wanted to read it. It sounds self-reflexively egotistical, but it's really being honest with myself that I don't need to meet someone else's economic and marketing standards to find my own value in being a writer.
In short, I haven't had this much fun since composing my first polished short stories in college, and even those were mired in self-doubt and mirrored recrimination (you're just a hack!). The spiritual truism is true in this endeavor as in all others: surrender, and you will win; give up and declare victory; let go of all your dreams and allow your dreams to come to you.
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