Some time away

Without planning to, I took the weekend off. I gave myself total permission to do nothing productive. I even napped in a hammock, the quintessential relaxing endeavor. Now I'm back, feeling very refreshed. And the odd thing is, I even managed to slip some work into the weekend--I created a chart to track my submissions, and researched some journals to submit to. But it didn't feel like work. The beauty of not expecting anything out of yourself.

Speaking of which, I think the very reason I am having such a hard time writing right now is because I'm expecting too much from myself and my writing. I'm not allowing myself the time for Shitty First Drafts. I'm expecting to have been published yesterday.

So I'm going to start over in creating my post MFA writing life. I'm going to experiment with ways to keep myself writing, but also keep myself enjoying the process (with room for the occasional freak out of course. What kind of writer doesn't freak out from time to time?). I'm not sure what the experiments are going to look out, so stay tuned.

Look ma, no hands!

This writing process is an emotional roller coaster! Just look at my last two posts: one minute I was thrilled with the progress I made with my story, the next I was in despair about the story and writing in general.

I laid awake in bed last night (probably because I slept so much all damn weekend...) and I spent some of the time thinking about one aspect of my story that needed work. I think I figured out why the character is doing what she's doing, which will help me take a new crack at the story tonight. But I'm far from that elated, aha, top-of-the-roller-coaster feeling. It's more like I'm dreading the work, not quite sure if I'll ever get that good feeling again.

At least I have some place to dig in.