It doesn't help these days that I regularly go on vacation the first week of November. Silly wedding anniversary!
I like to write. I have been writing since elementary school, before I started composing music. As you can imagine, they were very bad stories. I have improved, however. I hope.
A couple of posts ago was the short story I wrote to get into my character Ketlan's head. While it's not the finest piece of fiction ever written (and highlights my distinct need for a beta/editor), I had lots of fun writing it. I have fun writing these posts, although they are not nearly as structured or thought out.
I rarely finish any story. I've only finished one novel, and it was because I forced myself to finish it after literally years of rewriting. I had it published on my old Geocities site I created in high school. It's not very good, but it's complete. I have a couple of shorts published on fanfiction.net, and they are very short indeed. One is basically just a joke piece, and the other is a self-contained scene from a larger fan fiction that I will probably never finish.
My stories have a habit of spiraling into large epics that are never finished.
I think it's because I love creating characters, and backstories, and relationships. I think of a character, and then I want to know why she is the way she is. What was her childhood? Who were her friends? What's the history of her country? The next thing I know, my short story has become an epic because I create so many details I don't want to cut any of it out.
I think that's one of the reasons I'm an altoholic. I just like creating characters!
I have an easier time writing music. I can write a short piece of music without it spiraling out of control. While I've had songs take life of their own, I'm a lot more skilled at pruning and shaping music than the written word. Sadly for my ego, it's lot easier to share the written word than a song. WTB singers!
I've tried to sit down and write my stories. I took up game programming once and started to program RPGs based on my stories. I even have about thirteen pages of a webcomic I work on every now and then. I just don't stick with one project long enough to finish it.
It's a little funny that my main WoW character is a discipline priest when what I need in real life is more discipline. This journal is meant to be a motivator, even if at times it's a distraction.
"Hello, my name is Musicita, and I am an undisciplined procrastinator."
You, my fictional readers, are my support group.
I published that story on Ketlan less than a half hour after finishing it. I did it before I could chicken out, or find an excused to delay. (To tell the truth, it really could have used a day. I shudder now at all the mistakes I made.) The self-contained scene I published I forced myself to publish because I knew I wouldn't finish the full story. I am pushing myself to make progress now, to publish something that isn't perfect, for no other reason than to get myself in the habit of not procrastinating or dithering. I can edit later. Nothing is finished until I'm dead.
That's what NaNoWriMo is all bout. It's about finishing a project, when you've been too afraid. You don't have time to be afraid when you've only got a month.
That's why I said in my first post that my goal is to write one full piece of music every month. Unlike NaNoWriMo, I'm not imposing a minimum length, since it's hard to judge length in music.
I don't know yet if I will attempt to participate this year. I'm already a week behind, and I don't know what I'd write about. I have a feeling I would only use it as an excuse not to work on other projects, and then never finish the story.
So: am I being afraid, or practical? I wish I knew.
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