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year in review: 2018
Jan. 1st, 2019 03:48 pmThis was a weird year.
For at least half of it I was recovering from a fairly traumatic health problem (detailed in guitar posts). I spent a lot of time playing guitar, took the kids to NYC for the first time, and decided to move forward with a home improvement project we've been wanting to do for a long time.
However, this was a terrible writing year.
When I had my health scare, I expected to feel some kind of desperation about my writing. I've wanted to be a writer for my entire life, and I'm trying to finish a writing certificate program that I entered a few years ago, and for a few months I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it. But I didn't feel desperate. Instead, I felt relief.
I've been trying to unpack what this means. For years I've thought of myself as an aspiring writer, and I always thought if I took it seriously I would finally be happy and satisfied with my career choice. I've been a writer in fandom since probably 2002 or earlier, and I used to be really involved in the Sherlock fandom writing community in particular.
But I never have any ideas for books or stories. I've never carried around notebooks, I don't read voraciously, I've never enjoyed a single writing class (and I've taken a lot of them). I haven't been able to change projects in my writing program because I simply don't have another idea for anything else I might want to write. And maybe it's writer's block, or depression, or something like that. But maybe I just... don't have ideas. Maybe I'm only an occasional fandom writer and I've been running down the wrong road for a very long time. Maybe I've just never figured out what my career was supposed to be.
I know I can write, and I know I need to write as an outlet, but apparently I can't focus on it exclusively without killing my desire to do it.
I'm not sure what all of this means. I feel like this year I'll be working on figuring it out.
For at least half of it I was recovering from a fairly traumatic health problem (detailed in guitar posts). I spent a lot of time playing guitar, took the kids to NYC for the first time, and decided to move forward with a home improvement project we've been wanting to do for a long time.
However, this was a terrible writing year.
When I had my health scare, I expected to feel some kind of desperation about my writing. I've wanted to be a writer for my entire life, and I'm trying to finish a writing certificate program that I entered a few years ago, and for a few months I thought I wouldn't be able to finish it. But I didn't feel desperate. Instead, I felt relief.
I've been trying to unpack what this means. For years I've thought of myself as an aspiring writer, and I always thought if I took it seriously I would finally be happy and satisfied with my career choice. I've been a writer in fandom since probably 2002 or earlier, and I used to be really involved in the Sherlock fandom writing community in particular.
But I never have any ideas for books or stories. I've never carried around notebooks, I don't read voraciously, I've never enjoyed a single writing class (and I've taken a lot of them). I haven't been able to change projects in my writing program because I simply don't have another idea for anything else I might want to write. And maybe it's writer's block, or depression, or something like that. But maybe I just... don't have ideas. Maybe I'm only an occasional fandom writer and I've been running down the wrong road for a very long time. Maybe I've just never figured out what my career was supposed to be.
I know I can write, and I know I need to write as an outlet, but apparently I can't focus on it exclusively without killing my desire to do it.
I'm not sure what all of this means. I feel like this year I'll be working on figuring it out.
