Tuesday, July 21, 2015

So about that deadline

Yeah. I lied.

I came home, settled in, and for the first couple of weeks, everything went well. I was editing the thesis stuff, absorbing the notes from my professors and generally trying to re-find my footing in the story's structure. I finished most of the thesis edits. I started work on the ending.

Then I got past the couple of weeks and to the 'what next?' of post-grad life.

I panicked. I think everyone does, at least a little bit, but my version of panicking unfortunately does not come engineered with a kick up the ass and lightning bolts of productivity. God, if that was how it worked. Instead, I get the exact opposite, which is lethargy, a desire to burn the whole fucking manuscript, and the creeping dread that I might be a fraud.

I kept vacillating between all out focus on my novel and the equally all out focused search for jobs and a career that involves a stable income, but because of the seriousness of these two ultimatums, I ended up ignoring both, choosing instead to take the post-college break that I thought I needed. But then again, it wasn't so much a choice as 'guilt time' - time in which I fretted that I wasn't being productive, and so was unable to enjoy much of it at all. It's so very easy to let today slip past when you can spend hours worrying over what you didn't do the day before.

As a result, I don't really know what's happened to the last two months. My birthday's in there somewhere, sandwiched between the books I read. I've written a couple of other things that amount to some thousand words, though not much more. I haven't even read as much as I thought I would.

This isn't the first time it's happened, and in fact, this always seems to occur when my novels are ready for revision. I'm really fed up of it, not least because it's the main thing holding me back from the life that I really want.

There's no real answer out there for me, except to try to move forward. I wish there was.

So these are the struggles I'm going through right now. Nothing major, or life-threatening, but I thought it was worth documenting.