Saturday, November 06, 2004
I am trying to do Nanowrimo again this year, but I must admit my commitment to it is less than spectacular. How could I whole-heartedly try it (writing 50K in one month) while at the same time packing to leave our home of 4 years? It jsut wouldn't happen unless I miracuously start wriing 5K a day on weekends.
I picked up Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged off the floor this afternoon. Greg was putting Phoebe down for a nap. The verison I have includes her journal entries when imagining the book. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with this sense of "I am not a writer because..." Because I am not exactly like whatever writer I am reading about. I love books about writers...their lives, their journals, the inner workings of their imagination, their friendships, their letters. Sometimes I think its counter-prodcuitive to my own craetivity though because I AM NOt those other writers. I wrote starts of stories when small. I wrote in diaries and journals, but it never consummed me. I never persevered. I didn't take advanced courses in English in college. I became a biologist...and not a great one. I became a business person.
Sometimes I fear that my new journey will not take me deeper into creativity. It will not give me the time I've always felt I needed to write or paint...it will just show that in all things I'm a dilatant, a dabbler a person that skims the surface but doesn't dive in.
How is it atht I am such a strong woman...have faced so much but still doubt myself? How is it that I don't jow that I can do anythign I set my mind to?
Just this nanowrimo is bringing the stories out. Before, I get the start, but I don't have the story...I have worlds in my head, snippets of character but I can't delve into that deep place, that outer world where writers grab their stuff--that tafffy in the outer world that they take and weave...it remain out there, unavailable...but even these few days, the stories evolve more. I feel like all I have to do is keep at it jsut a little.
And I will.
I've had this idea for my new career...my business actually. It isn't much of a twist on my previous dwelling about being a freelancer. I was reading on the Well-fed Writer about commercial freelance and it hit me--Environmental Consulting as an industry is ready to embrace commercial freelance. There is a place for ghost writers. That's my business. Forget the crap about whether or not I do delineations, or permitting...I can just take the tech reports and write the chapters, the reports--hand them in, collect my money and be done with it. I can do face to face's...meet my clients and be on the way. I knwo the industry.
It distracts me. I stopped being creative the moment I thought it up.
That's ok though. Its just something that comes and goes.
¶ 1:53 PM
I picked up Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged off the floor this afternoon. Greg was putting Phoebe down for a nap. The verison I have includes her journal entries when imagining the book. Sometimes I am overwhelmed with this sense of "I am not a writer because..." Because I am not exactly like whatever writer I am reading about. I love books about writers...their lives, their journals, the inner workings of their imagination, their friendships, their letters. Sometimes I think its counter-prodcuitive to my own craetivity though because I AM NOt those other writers. I wrote starts of stories when small. I wrote in diaries and journals, but it never consummed me. I never persevered. I didn't take advanced courses in English in college. I became a biologist...and not a great one. I became a business person.
Sometimes I fear that my new journey will not take me deeper into creativity. It will not give me the time I've always felt I needed to write or paint...it will just show that in all things I'm a dilatant, a dabbler a person that skims the surface but doesn't dive in.
How is it atht I am such a strong woman...have faced so much but still doubt myself? How is it that I don't jow that I can do anythign I set my mind to?
Just this nanowrimo is bringing the stories out. Before, I get the start, but I don't have the story...I have worlds in my head, snippets of character but I can't delve into that deep place, that outer world where writers grab their stuff--that tafffy in the outer world that they take and weave...it remain out there, unavailable...but even these few days, the stories evolve more. I feel like all I have to do is keep at it jsut a little.
And I will.
I've had this idea for my new career...my business actually. It isn't much of a twist on my previous dwelling about being a freelancer. I was reading on the Well-fed Writer about commercial freelance and it hit me--Environmental Consulting as an industry is ready to embrace commercial freelance. There is a place for ghost writers. That's my business. Forget the crap about whether or not I do delineations, or permitting...I can just take the tech reports and write the chapters, the reports--hand them in, collect my money and be done with it. I can do face to face's...meet my clients and be on the way. I knwo the industry.
It distracts me. I stopped being creative the moment I thought it up.
That's ok though. Its just something that comes and goes.
¶ 1:53 PM
