Sunday morning - deadlines and deliveries

I haven't done much of anything since my last blog several days ago, except work, prepare for another work transition, and think too damn much. The thinking thing is a definite curse, and one I have got to learn to overcome before I think myself to death. In thinking is a paralysis of action, and inaction is the surest way to stay exactly where you are.

Today is the deadline to complete Short Story #1. I wrote it on this big dry-erase calendar that I have on my desk that I bought shortly after we moved into the new house back in September. It's up there in bold black letters, along with future deadlines for Short Story #2, #3, and #4. It's got six big black "X" marks for days I haven't written, and one note last Tuesday that says "Blog #1," because that's when I wrote my last blog. Up top, next to the printed word, "This Month's Plan," I've written Heinlein's five rules. 

My dry erase desk calendar.

I knew the short story a week goal was going to be challenging, and I knew I'd probably procrastinate, but I didn't realize how quickly I'd go looking for something, anything else to do besides sit down and write. I mean, there are plenty of excuses to be had, plenty of reasons not to write, to say I've got too much going on to focus, to say that I just want to wait until the job transition back to my old job is complete, to say that I'm tired after work, or the dogs take too much time, or there are too many other little things that need to be addressed to sit down and write.

It's all bullshit. It's the same ole same. I'm just plain scared, and that fear is manifesting as worry, busy work, and downright laziness. The only way to be a writer, so to speak, is to write.

I reread a series Dean Wesley Smith wrote about Heinlein's rules, and one thing stuck out at me that I'd never really noticed before. He said that all that fear of failure (or success, or just doing the damn work) that keeps people from writing, that keeps me from writing, should be nothing compared to the public spectacle we make of ourselves to our friends and family and anyone else we tell about our writerly aspirations and then don't write. They know we are failing. We know we are failing. I know I am failing, and not because what I write isn't good, but because I don't write, and I don't finish what I write.

Heinlein's first two rules, right there. The cause of most failed writers. 

Fortunately, the one thing I know how to deal with is procrastination, particularly my own. I've mastered this shit, going all the way back to every high school homework assignment ever. I always got them done, and I'll get this story done today. And the next, and the one after that. And I'll submit them, or self-publish them, and I'll keep on writing. 

I've got to find the joy in this, the feeling I get when I am writing and it's just fun, a damn good time, the best time I know. All the anxiety comes before I write, or after I've written some and start thinking too much. It's never present in the midst of the writing. The solution, then, is to always be writing.

Thanks for humoring me. This blog is, at times, just a place for me to spill, to organize, and to rid myself of enough of the anxiety to get back to the work. It's a good place to remind myself what I'm trying to do, who I'm trying to be, and to get back at it. I apologize for that. 

But maybe, just maybe, when I get past all this pre-writer angsty bullshit I let myself wallow in, you'll be able to tell someone, "Oh, hey, are you reading the new Joe Cleary novel? I used to read his blog back before he had any idea what the fuck he was doing!"

See you tomorrow.