When to Push
I’m still learning when and how I can push myself into writing. I seem to have cycles, times when it’s easy to write and times when it’s very hard. (Hm. I just realized that I should be tracking this, to see if it matches up with anything else.) One difficulty – and I think I’ve talked about this before – is that a simple reluctance to write feels very similar to this-scene-isn’t-right reluctance.
I was hit with a combination of the two this week. I had a hard time writing over the weekend, decided the scene wasn’t right, and early this week came up with an idea that I think will work better. But it took until today for me to get started again.
Now, that probably has something to do with the fact that I’ve been tired, fighting off a cold, and mildly depressed. But does giving myself a break for a few days and not pushing it help? Or should I have been making myself sit at the keyboard anyway?
If I’m going to do this as a career I know I need to be able to get words on the page whether I feel like it or not. Most of the time I do. On the other hand, I do believe that creativity has natural ups and downs. Is it really a good thing to ignore the lows? Even if I can’t answer that yet, one thing I know I should do is pay more attention to taking full advantage of the ups while I have them.
At least now I’m back at work. After deleting over 1800 words. Sigh.