Well, I guess I should be pleased it took this long, but I'm officially discouraged.
So discouraged that I'm having trouble putting the feeling into words accurately. I feel like I'm trying to break through a wall of concrete with nothing more than my bare hands. I've been flailing against the unmovable stone, and now I'm slowly coming to realize there's nothing I can do.
Everything seems impossible now. I've been sick and waylaid with some pretty serious real life matters, and while I was unpacking things in the new apartment, I just stopped and wondered what I was doing with my life. I wondered if it really is possible for me to publish a book. I wondered if it's even possible for me to finish my first draft. I've stared at the draft for days and nothing comes, so much so that I've become intimately familiar with the rhythms of that blinking cursor; it almost seems to taunt me. I'm too distracted.
Too discouraged.
What was I thinking? Why am I banking on the possibility of my success when I've never succeeded at anything in my life? I have no real skills, and worse, I can't seem to sustain any faith in myself and my abilities (or lack thereof).
It's the Despair Spiral. It starts with a nagging worry, and then from there it just spins out of control. I start thinking 'what am I doing?' and then the next thing I know, I'm in this quagmire of pessimistic speculation. I'm wondering if I'm any good at this. I'm wondering if I've got what it takes to see this through. I'm wondering if anything I do will make any difference at all, or if I'm just going to slog away and pound at that wall, never making any progress.
What possessed me to think that I actually could write anything, let alone make a living doing so? I mean, I knew it would be more than just reading books on how to write and editing the snot out of my own work, but staring at what I need to accomplish from this side is just daunting. I've done hardly anything so far; I haven't even finished my first draft. It's sitting anemically at 13k words.
Fernando says that I shouldn't be too hard on myself. The last two weeks have been beyond hectic, and things are only now starting to relatively even out. Relatively; as in, things are still batshit, just not as batshit as before. I can't fucking concentrate on anything! I try to slip into the world I'm building, the characters I'm getting to know, but they elude me.
Maybe I'm trying too hard. Maybe I'm too desperate and that's why I can't get anything done. But why should working hard be a detriment to this pursuit? I've been studying tirelessly, working over my writing style and process whenever I get a chance.
That could be part of the problem. The more I learn, the more I realize I have left to learn, and the act of becoming a good writer seems even more remote. Distant and unattainable.
How do you get out of the Despair Spiral once it starts? I don't know. Ask me in a few days, when I smack myself in the face for being a whiny bitch and pull myself up by the bootstraps. I know it'll happen, just right now I can't see that outcome. Right now, all I see is inevitable failure, and my own inability to change it.
Now, I'm not downplaying encouragement at all, because it's totally necessary and a wonderful thing, BUT... you are the only one who can see this through. I know what it's like to get into a despair spiral, I've been there. What needs to happen, though, is you need to take the picking yourself up by your bootstraps part to the beginning of the despair spiral! Negativity towards yourself is in NO WAY ok. EVER. It's more than ok to realize when you've messed something up or need to improve, but that does not have to be negative at all. You are never, ever helping anything by beating yourself up and there's not a damned thing that any of us (those people who love you oh so dearly) can do about it.
ReplyDeleteSO my suggestion to you is to pay very close attention to yourself. Put up some reminders and encouragements to yourself so that when you get to the beginning of a despair spiral, you can recognize that you're the only one who can stop that negativity towards yourself... and not only that, but that you CAN stop it. A habit does not define you and it can be changed.
I LOVE YOU!!! <3 (and you can so do this... at this point in time you are your only roadblock, and you can just as easily clear away that roadblock as put it there!)