My friend and fellow Master Class graduate Mike Jasper propsed a day-by-day writing challenge for the month of July. Before going any farther than that, let me just say this: THANK YOU MIKE!!!
The past few months have been really interesting in the life of this writer. I wish I could explain what happened–all I know is I stayed obsesssed with the idea of being a writer, but for some reason I had a really hard time actually getting down to writing. It’s like the business side of things started winning out in my thoughts over the creative/productive side of being a writer, which is patently ridiculous if you think about it — there’s no writing business unless you have a product.
So, for some reason, I became obsessed with doing detail work–finding beta readers, getting latest updates on my writing software, mailing stuff that for whatever reason had yet to see the hands of an editor–everything but actually getting new words on the page.
Then along came Mike’s challenge.
I accepted the challenge, naturally–emailing the rest of the Master Class gang and saying I was going to shoot for 40,000 words during the month of July. Now, when I’m really humming and in the groove, 40,000 words is still about a solid work-week of time. When I’m in a slump I only get between 500-750 words an hour, so I figured I was looking at a week and a half of work (figuring I’d ramp up to full speed after the first calendar week of July and then go full-bore after that).
Enter LIFE. You know, that big guy who wears a cowl and has a scythe. Twin brother to DEATH, but LIFE attacks time and desire instead of life points.
Wham! literally the minute after I’d hit “send” on the email committing myself to Mike’s writing challenge, my manager at the day job called a meeting in which a bunch of new features were dumped on the team with the edict: “These need to be in the product that ships in 6 weeks — probably means we’ll be working overtime or weekends; whatever it takes to get it done.”
I decided not to let that stop me. The crowd cheered my determination. I stayed late at work during that first week or so, putting in a couple 12 hour days just to stay ahead of the curve and free up some time for later in the month. One week in, only about 5K words written, but I was feeling pretty good about the rest of the month–with the exception that I was still at a slow pace on my writing speed. Things hadn’t picked up for me yet.
Week 2 arrived. Wham! I broke my glasses. Right in the middle of the nose bridge. Now, I’m pretty worthless when I can’t see what I’m doing. Instead of writing that night I amused myself with my broken glasses, holding each half by the ear piece and letting the lenses hang down like transparent feet, by doing the Charlie Chaplin dinner-roll dance. For a little while my glasses were literally held together by tape and bailing wire and I had to adjust them every 30 seconds (no exaggeration) to keep them from falling off my face. Week 2 ended with a visit to the eye doctor–new prescription and new glasses now on the way–and the discovery of a local jeweler who does eye glasses repair .
At my writers’ group meeting in the first week of July (we meet at the local Barnes & Nobel) I discovered a little book called Brainstorms, written by Eric Maisel. Dr. Maisel builds on that oft heard premise that we don’t use our brains nearly enough. His book’s purpose is to encourage people to cultivate “Productive Obsessions” or Brainstorms–something consciously chosen instead of the brain’s willy-nilly following of trends or interests as they happen upon us. Much of what I read while waiting for my fellow writers’ to arrive that night rang true to me and I decided, along with Mike’s challenge, to spend the month cultivating a Productive Obsession about my writing.
Those who know me will probably be shocked by that statement. After all, doesn’t Darren spend a lot of time writing already? He’s working on a novel, isn’t he? And he’s got several stories in the mail already, right?
Well… yes, but…
Like I said above, I’ve known something was a little off with my writing dreams for a while now. Business side, mailing, seeking out good first-readers–no problem! I’ve had a blast doing that kind of thing over the past couple months. I even accepted an invite to sit on my first conference panel on writing. Yet I didn’t even realize that none of that was really being productive. Writers write. I was living the life of an author. Authors have written. Big difference. And the transition from Writer to Author had been so subtle I hadn’t even noticed it.
So today at the day-job we demo’d the new features for the software and made the transition to debugging instead of developing new things. I have repaired glasses on face and new glasses on order. I gave myself permission to Obsess (productively) during any free time I had today about the stories I want to tell. I turned off the car radio and used my commute to think Story! It was wonderful. Any time I had even a few minutes to myself I reminded myself that I was Productively Obsessing and thought about my characters and the scenes I’m about to write. I asked and answered a bunch of questions.
Despite the several thousand words i logged earlier this month, I’m proud to say that, as of today, once again I am a writer.
So thank you Mike! And thank you Dr. Maisel! Both of you provided exactly the spark I needed at exactly the right time. I can’t wait to see how the rest of this month turns out.
