Time for a rant

 I'm having a moment, please bear with me. Don't feel the need to comment as most of this is just me venting and spitballing into the blogosphere.

In January I went on a lovely weekend writing retreat and poured out 7,000 words of a fully planned story. I felt energised and ready to crack on with it. Since then I've managed 500 words and the feeling has gone.

I'm starting to doubt what I'm doing this for. I struggle to maintain a routine, I flit from idea to idea never finishing anything and I doubt that I have what it takes anyway.

So far so normal.

Yet... But... However...

I know that my procrastination is strong, perhaps the strongest force known to mankind. I could have a PhD in procrastination if I could be bothered to study for it. So I am well aware that I am procrastinating. Even sitting here writing this blog post is a form of procrastination. And I'm pretty sure that it all stems from a fear of failure. All through my life I have avoided doing things because I'm afraid that I will fail. And if I don't even try, well I can't fail then can I? So I am aware that I am avoiding writing because I am afraid that I'm really not as good as I would like to be or even think I might be. And if I don't sit down and write, well there's nothing to share is there? So no-one will find out I'm not that good really.

Round and round and round I go, procrastinating again.

But I really want to succeed, whatever that means. I want to have at least one finished, edited piece of work that I am proud of. And I'll never have that if I don't finish something. And I'll never finish anything if... I think we all get the drift now, don't we?

I've read all the advice, I've agreed with all the experts about the importance of a good writing routine and yet I still faff about, not turning the laptop on and not writing anything. 

So, what am I doing it for? When I actually do it, of course. That's the question I've been asking myself and so far myself has failed to come up with a satisfactory answer. I still have the fantasy of wishing to see my name on a book cover somewhere. I'd also rather like to submit a successful entry to a writing competition. But is that all I want? Surely at the heart of why most of us write is the desire to tell our stories, even if no-one else ever reads them. And I do want to tell my stories.

It's a conundrum. 

The end result is that I have to strip it all back to the bare bones, to get to the heart of why I write. And if that means I never share another word or another tale... so be it. I have to tell my stories but I don't have to decide just now who I'm telling them to. Maybe I don't have to have readers? Maybe the telling is the point. However, what's the point of a story that no-one ever reads? I wish I had the answers but I don't. I'm lost and flat and lacklustre, as a writer and as a person. It's hard and I worry that it'll just get harder unless I manage to find my writing mojo again.

How Can I Navigate All This?

 Okay, I confess, I'm not tech savvy at all. Right up front, there it is. So maybe I'm being really dense but I'm struggling to get my head round how it all works. 

I've been trying to share work on another blogging platform and have been finding it a frustrating experience. What makes it worse is that everyone else seems to think that it's a really easy platform to use. So I must be the problem if I can't figure it out, right?

Perhaps.

But I'm feeling confused and left out over there. So I've decided to move away from that place and return to here where I feel settled. At least I know what's going on over here, it feels more like my blogging home.

However, I'm also feeling confused about the whole podcasting thing. I dipped a toe into it with a spooky electronic voice reading my words and the feedback I got was that I would be better to read it myself. And I have to say I agree, the electronic voice did my writing no favours.

I return to my first point. I'm not tech savvy. So the world of podcasting is very scary and strange. I don't have technical skills and I've failed on numerous occasions to acquire them. So the highly polished world of the podcast isn't somewhere I feel at home.

This is a barrier but one I want to try and climb.

So, in the spirit of adventure I'm going to try podcasting without the frills. Just me and my words. No fancy intros and outros, no music, no sound effects or posh editing. I'm going to sit and chat and read out what I want to share. It will be a car crash but it will be my car crash and I'll own it.

Watch out for me, I'll be the girl with the Brummie accent reading out stuff and fluffing her lines somewhere in the podcast-verse.

Photo by Hans-Peter Gauster on Unsplash

How Do You Feel When You Look At The Stars? - #bloganuary

 

There's something special about finding a really dark night sky and staring up at the stars.

Always makes me feel very small, a speck on the surface of a small planet lost in the vastness of space.

Insignificant.

But that's how I feel most of the time so...

But a starry sky is cool. Ask Vincent Van Gogh.

What Do I Most Like About Myself? - #bloganuary

As soon as I started to think about this prompt it began to form as a lonely hearts advert. You know the ones: GSOH, looking for love, no time wasters. It's odd to think of myself in those terms and I'm terminally bad at thinking anything nice about myself. But I'm determined to have a go.

I think I'm a kind soul. I try to think the best of people, to see the good in them. Sometimes it's a challenge but it seems easier to do when you meet people expecting positive things. Of course there are people about whom I might struggle to come up with positives but I'm not likely to bump into them so I don't have to worry about politicians here! I like to think that I'm a good friend, someone who my friends enjoy hanging out with, someone who is reliable and steadfast. Gosh, that's an old fashioned word but one which I like to embrace. I'm not flashy, not 'out there' but I'm a safe pair of hands as they say in cricketing circles.

So there you have it. I'm embracing 'nice', 'kind' and 'steadfast'. Rock and roll or what?