Monday 21 November 2016

Lazy and afraid.

I've got this thing about writing fiction: I can't do it. I can't get myself to do it. I think I'm afraid of it being really, really god-awful. Most of my non-fiction is something I don't think about. I just do it, it just comes out because it's coming straight from my head. It is my real thoughts in real time. Fiction comes from somewhere else. I'm not always sure where that is.

I have written fiction before. I got to 50,000 words of a novel when I was 13 before I became self-conscious and wouldn't dare touch it anymore. I always think of that age as my golden age for creativity. I made short films and wrote stories and cared deeply about what I was doing and about nothing else. I didn't care what people thought of what I did, I just wanted to do it. All my ideas were tangible and I was very productive with them. I remember staying up until way into the early hours of the morning writing a chapter that had come into my head. When did I last do something like that?

I'm too scared to do it now. I care whether it's good or not. I want it to be good the minute it goes onto the page. I want immediate satisfaction from it. I've become lazy, I'm less willing to put in the effort. But the worst thing is that I'm not willing to give it up. 

I have a constant cycle of feeling guilty for not paying attention to any creative writing, putting in minimal effort for half an hour every couple of weeks and then waiting for the guilt to creep back in. I know that I am actively stopping myself from writing. I am afraid and lazy and I care what people think. How do I start to undo that? 

No comments:

Post a Comment