One of my greatest struggles as a writer is overexcitement and undercommitment. Let me explain:
-Patrick was my first love. Every once in a while I think, I'll spend some time with Patrick. I'll empathize with him for a little while, I'll enjoy his beauty, I'll give him a few new adverbs and sharpen his motivation. I'll summarize his story in a way that makes everyone want to read it.
-The moment passes.
-I'll read a blog about how London's West End is currently full of jukebox musicals and I feel a sudden wild passion to create something new, to be backstage, to make something magnificent and start a theatrical renaissance.
-I get discouraged by how hard it is to break into theatrical writing. The moment passes.
-I listen to the 'soundtrack' for my WIP on the walk home. The songs sound like characters speaking to me. I feel every emotion that I want to see poured out on my pages. I'm ready to fire up the laptop the moment I walk in the door.
-Dinner, tidying the kitchen, putting in a load of laundry, watching an episode of Glee, phoning Mom, a little reading, bed.
-I read over my 'current projects' list. Five of them appeal to me and I'm excited to see where the stories and characters are going to go.
-Overwhelmed. Choose none of them.
There's a danger of magpieing - getting distracted by the latest shiny story idea but lacking the dedication to sit down with it for an hour. I want to be the Olympic swimmer of writing, constantly honing my craft, constantly using those muscles. What I seem to be instead is the retired gardener of writing, potting around in my mind-shed, which is like a mind-palace but smaller and underfurnished because I haven't given it the time and materials to achieve magnificence.
And that's just one writing struggle. Sometime when I'm feeling ambitious I'll have to write about plotting.
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