High Aspirations and Doubts Collide

Hello! I meant for last week's post to be short, but it ended up being pretty long. So, this time it'll be short. We've officially reached the halfway point of the semester! It's crazy to think we'll done two months from now, and I'll be graduating. I enjoyed doing a personal post midway through last semester, so I thought I'd do it again. I've been thinking a lot about my writing goals because I have a lot, but I haven't been making much progress on them. I just thought I'd share my thoughts and hold myself accountable. I can come back here at some point in the future and see how far I've come.

What I'm Working On

I will give you a peek into the inner machinations of my mind. I have a lot I want to do, but I've noticed my aspirations may be a bit too high. First, I posted the first chapter of my first priority writing project on my blog. I don't want to spoil too much, but it's a YA book about five girls in a book club who discover the fictional series they're reading is real. As of right now, it is 60k words. That may sound like a lot, but my plan is to add a couple more chapters. I don't have a finished draft yet besides the general outline of the story currently. It probably seems like I have enough for a draft, but I don't want to call it too soon since I'm still thinking of changing some major details. It wouldn't be a complete rewrite, but they are big enough that I want to figure them out before moving forward. For example, the characters are in seventh grade. Would it be better if they were in eighth grade or even freshman year of high school? There are five main characters right now. Would I rather just have two of the girls be the main characters and demote the rest? Will it be too hard to flesh out all of them without the book being too long? I hope to finish this draft sometime in the near future, and once I do, then I'll start the beta reading phase!

So, after I finish this first big project, what will I focus on next? Well, I have second, third, and fourth projects in the back of my mind. The second one is a project I started in my sophomore year of high school that is actually completed. The page count is 65k words, which is nuts. It's the longest work I've ever finished. It's really embarrassing, but... it was fanfiction. That's right. The longest thing I've ever written is a fanfiction. I wrote the first half in high school and finished it a year ago. I go back to it on occasion because I think it's the worst but funniest thing I've ever written. The reason I finished it is because it works as its own original concept with some adjustments. After a lot of revision, I think it will not be terrible. It would be a long time from now, but I'm not even sure what it would feel like to publish a work so close to my heart. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll trash the whole idea and just post it on AO3 in its original form or something.

Project three is maybe perhaps a screenplay. I would love to write a play. Or a movie. I'm not really sure yet. I started writing it forever ago and have nothing more than a couple of scenes and a rough plot outline. I hope to write it after finishing my other projects, so it's going to be a really long time. For the fourth project, I am deciding between two different ideas. Both are collections of short stories. One is a series that already has six stories out of ten completed, and the second is an anthology of short stories about a post-apocalypse. The second option would be to start from scratch, but I'm more interested in pursuing it. But man, I don't know.

What's Stopping Me?

Why don't I just work on this stuff? Well, ever since I finished writing my second project last spring, I have not made any progress on any of these or really any creative writing. I read through the manuscript of my first project, which took some time. And I started a short story that I also posted here, but I started it in the fall and it's only 3k words after five months. So, I haven't done nothing, but I haven't done a lot either. Why?

I think I've lost my talent. Besides my blog and professional writing, I don't think I can write well anymore. I can't do any creative writing without thinking it's the worst thing I've ever put to paper. I have the same problem with my academic writing and can't write a paper for my life. It's so odd. Do I just prefer certain types of writing over others now? Maybe I'm just insanely burnt out. I stopped taking a long-term medication in the fall, and that's around when I stopped having the desire to do creative writing, so I always credit that as the problem. I also haven't just had any time to write. Last semester, I took 19 credits, and now, I'm taking 18. Every time I say I'm going to sit down and write, I just get too tired and decide to do something.

I'm sure it's just a slump. The hardest part is just getting started. Once I actually write something, I'll get back into it like I have in the past. I just find that I haven't really been proud of my writing since my primary project. I have this fear in the back of my brain that... this is it. I'm never going to write again. My dream of being an author is dashed. I try to stay away from that mentality, though, since it's depressing. I've been exercising my creativity in other ways. I'm still developing ideas: I have a long-term series I've been developing, and the document for it is an insane 70 pages. And it's ongoing...It's forever my dream to bring my ideas to life. Maybe TV or movies are the route instead of writing. The ideas are sometimes so vivid that I visualize minutes of scenes in like an AMV format, so I've been wanting to learn how to draw and animate. One does not just "get into drawing" without taking years to master their craft, though. I wish I had some way to get all the garbage in my head out because everything feels like it's all bottled up. I think the only vehicle I have right now is this blog because.... Oh shoot, this post is long.

(Picture taken by me)