I have been incredibly lax about keeping up with this. It happens. I get into a routine, and all goes well, and then something comes along to side-swipe me (good or bad, usually a mix of both) and writing a new post gets pushed back to tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. Before you know it, it's been six months of tomorrows and a mound of good intentions you couldn't dig your way out of with a backhoe.
That's just part of it. There's the self-consciousness of writing in a public forum. The two-pronged attack of who gives a shit what I have to say about x? and what are the people I know going to think?
It took me a long time to be comfortable admitting to other people that I'm a writer. There were mixed feelings about it, usually some sort of guilt and almost shame. Shame isn't the right word, but I don't know that there is one. I was embarrassed to admit it, mostly because I felt like I was pretending to something and would eventually be found out.
That's kind of been a theme with me. This fear that the nameless They will identify me as a fake.
Back to the two questions. They're both questions that anyone who makes anything carries around with them, probably forever. Yeah, sure, we're all good at throwing out this external projection of confidence. We put together our little spiels to justify our projects and passions and convince others they're worthwhile and significant. But beneath all that, those two questions are still there. Who cares, and what are they going to think?
I would say that a good portion of the creative process is learning to ignore those questions, or at the very least, to push through them. Otherwise, you just stop. There's no output.
The Who cares? question really only trips me up when it comes to this blog. For my fictional adventures, the answer is easy: I care, and yes, I'm self-centred enough to be satisfied with that. The other question doesn't usually trip me up so much (again, outside the blog; knowing your little eyes are scurrying over every word makes me cringe until I have to pretend you aren't out there); my fictional adventures are generally far enough removed from any semblance of real life I don't worry about people trying to place me (or themselves) into any of the characters or events.
Recently, though, I started working on a project that had a lot of similarities to real life. No alternate timelines or made up histories or fantasy elements. Suddenly, what other people would think about it became the most prominent thought every time I sat down to work on it. I worried that they would recast my characters with real people, real thoughts, real events. And that did happen. I lost count of the number of times I had to say Maks is not me.
I guess it can be confusing for those who aren't used to spending a decent amount of time with someone else in their head.
Writing is something I do, and something I do quite haphazardly at that. A majority of the people around me are writers of one thing or another, and they work at. Daily. They plot out time, and create charts, plot arcs, character sheets. Sometimes I get around to doing all that, but mostly every few weeks or so I just sit down and throw out a thousand words or so. Sometimes I edit them, usually if someone else is going to grade them, but I rarely have to make major changes.
And I feel guilty about that. Because in the end, this is something that is quite easy for me that I more or less take for granted.
Shedding your skin is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. It's graceless. Uncomfortable. Potentially embarrassing. I've done it enough times to be intimately familiar with the process, and yet I just can't seem to help myself. The minute I get comfortable with one identity, it's on to the next. A little like places.
It took me a long time to be comfortable calling myself a writer. And I am, for the most part. I'm comfortable in my abilities to do plot and characterisation and meet deadlines (when I don't set them myself). So with that conquest down, over the past few years I've started falling back into photography, and with that shift comes all the old doubts and questions I used to have with writing. The difference being that at this stage in my life, I've learned that walking into what makes me uncomfortable is usually the best way to go.
But the whole process has gotten me thinking back, to what it took to be confident as a writer, to what it means to do either, to the similarities. Both, in a way, are a socially acceptable reason to watch people. Aside from all the other reasons - entertaining myself, affinity for shiny things, really liking to push buttons - that's probably the biggest motivation. People.
Writing, for me, has always just been a way of documenting the pictures I have in my head. (And maybe that's why I can sit down and throw out a thousand words or so, because it's all just pictures.) Visual and written are just parts of the same thing: a way to try to pin down all the little moments that make life what it is.
That's just part of it. There's the self-consciousness of writing in a public forum. The two-pronged attack of who gives a shit what I have to say about x? and what are the people I know going to think?
It took me a long time to be comfortable admitting to other people that I'm a writer. There were mixed feelings about it, usually some sort of guilt and almost shame. Shame isn't the right word, but I don't know that there is one. I was embarrassed to admit it, mostly because I felt like I was pretending to something and would eventually be found out.
That's kind of been a theme with me. This fear that the nameless They will identify me as a fake.
Back to the two questions. They're both questions that anyone who makes anything carries around with them, probably forever. Yeah, sure, we're all good at throwing out this external projection of confidence. We put together our little spiels to justify our projects and passions and convince others they're worthwhile and significant. But beneath all that, those two questions are still there. Who cares, and what are they going to think?
I would say that a good portion of the creative process is learning to ignore those questions, or at the very least, to push through them. Otherwise, you just stop. There's no output.
The Who cares? question really only trips me up when it comes to this blog. For my fictional adventures, the answer is easy: I care, and yes, I'm self-centred enough to be satisfied with that. The other question doesn't usually trip me up so much (again, outside the blog; knowing your little eyes are scurrying over every word makes me cringe until I have to pretend you aren't out there); my fictional adventures are generally far enough removed from any semblance of real life I don't worry about people trying to place me (or themselves) into any of the characters or events.
Recently, though, I started working on a project that had a lot of similarities to real life. No alternate timelines or made up histories or fantasy elements. Suddenly, what other people would think about it became the most prominent thought every time I sat down to work on it. I worried that they would recast my characters with real people, real thoughts, real events. And that did happen. I lost count of the number of times I had to say Maks is not me.
I guess it can be confusing for those who aren't used to spending a decent amount of time with someone else in their head.
Writing is something I do, and something I do quite haphazardly at that. A majority of the people around me are writers of one thing or another, and they work at. Daily. They plot out time, and create charts, plot arcs, character sheets. Sometimes I get around to doing all that, but mostly every few weeks or so I just sit down and throw out a thousand words or so. Sometimes I edit them, usually if someone else is going to grade them, but I rarely have to make major changes.
And I feel guilty about that. Because in the end, this is something that is quite easy for me that I more or less take for granted.
Shedding your skin is one of the hardest things you'll ever do. It's graceless. Uncomfortable. Potentially embarrassing. I've done it enough times to be intimately familiar with the process, and yet I just can't seem to help myself. The minute I get comfortable with one identity, it's on to the next. A little like places.
It took me a long time to be comfortable calling myself a writer. And I am, for the most part. I'm comfortable in my abilities to do plot and characterisation and meet deadlines (when I don't set them myself). So with that conquest down, over the past few years I've started falling back into photography, and with that shift comes all the old doubts and questions I used to have with writing. The difference being that at this stage in my life, I've learned that walking into what makes me uncomfortable is usually the best way to go.
But the whole process has gotten me thinking back, to what it took to be confident as a writer, to what it means to do either, to the similarities. Both, in a way, are a socially acceptable reason to watch people. Aside from all the other reasons - entertaining myself, affinity for shiny things, really liking to push buttons - that's probably the biggest motivation. People.
Writing, for me, has always just been a way of documenting the pictures I have in my head. (And maybe that's why I can sit down and throw out a thousand words or so, because it's all just pictures.) Visual and written are just parts of the same thing: a way to try to pin down all the little moments that make life what it is.
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