Thursday, 20 February 2014

Now that I have started to write…panic

Dear all,

This is a quick post to say that the last few days have been quite tough, but for good reasons. I have got to the point now where I have a routine and although I am not fully committed to it, things can slip by half an hour here and there; I am hoping it won’t be long before I am. In short I am writing in the morning and writing in the afternoon, two separate and allocated sessions. Sounds the most ludicrous of obvious statements but there it is. I am still looking for distractions, and my mind clouds up a lot but this is what it is all about. What I have been thinking of for so long, just having the day to write. If and when I get past the self created disruptions and manage to do two good (by which I mean actually write a lot of words, not just look at the screen) sets of three hours every day then it will prove to me that I can either create, or not.
That’s why it has been quite emotional because I am scared to death that it will all come to nothing! I will have used up my savings and wasted a year of my life. Now I’ll stop there because of course I know deep down that this is going to be (and already has been) an amazing experience in itself and nothing has been or will be wasted, so okay, I was over-egging it a bit. However, I need to be honest, the end result must show work, it is no good just getting a couple of thousand words out, I need to really increase the output. There is no way around that, I want to get a lot done. So if now the mechanism is in place and come December I haven’t produced much work…well, it is a terrifying thought. I felt like putting it down on paper, for the record, because whatever happens I want to look back and remember these moments of panic and despair whilst in the middle of having a bloody brilliant and fantastic time. It’s strange you know!
There was an embarrassing moment the other day when I felt tears well up behind my eyes in the local bar when going through some notes. I wasn’t feeling upset, it was the opposite in fact, a sense of positivity with a surge in self-belief (not alcohol inspired, promise!) I want things to work out so badly that the result was I felt a little choked up but out of happiness if that makes sense. I also had a bad pang of missing my friends and family, I had had a good day of writing and the urge to go my local pub back home and socialize hit me quite hard but for any friends reading this, it didn’t last long, I was back to watching Spanish football and drinking Estrella before you could say, ‘pint of London Pride please landlord’ so don’t let it go to your heads ;)
The feeling that I have got something in my life that I really I love, that really means something sends a shiver of realization through me whereby I understand this could well be the best moment in my entire writing life: the beginning. The time when I have the draft of a story in my head and I am about to attack it and see what comes out. It is such a great feeling. It feels good to be at the start of something because you have belief and for the time being at least you can push out the negative feelings. I am working for myself, not anyone else, and that sense of freedom was and is overwhelming. Feeling fully accepting of the scale of work involved is liberating too, I have gone past trying to think who I want to write like or emulate or what material gains I would like to achieve. It’s just a case of sitting down and writing for hours each day, and that’s when the fear and panic sets in, you question whether you can really do this, for example imagine you say to yourself, ‘I want to have the body of an athlete’…well get down the gym for six hours a day and in time you’ll get there…how many people know they could stick to going to the gym every day for six hours no matter how much you loved it and wanted the end result…well, that’s what I need to do with writing, I’m happy to acknowledge it but boy is it going to be tough. I want to write everything I have in my head down now this very minute, while the passion for it is there, I want to get all the ideas out of my brain and down onto paper in clear and concise prose so that it won’t fester, ruin and rot away with time, but you can’t, you have to be patient, methodical and work to a very long term plan.
So as I sat there thinking about how my fate rests entirely on how lazy I am feeling each day, I remember hoping that the moment of desire I felt at that second stayed with me, I could almost see the potential as a physical object that I could hold in my hands, the excitement is there, the sense of hard work is real, the sense of purpose is real, it’s not something that will happen next year, or once I get the next job, or I once I finish the next course, it is right here with me now; I just hope that it doesn’t fade.

RGR



P.S: Please join me on all my social media pages:
And Author Profile Pages to keep informed of the latest releases:

Share this PostPin ThisShare on TumblrShare on Google PlusEmail This