Warning: This post ended up going off on several tangents, having multiple conclusions and became way, way too long. I've had to split it into two separate posts. If you missed PART I - click here to read the first half.
I did not post Part II yesterday as I had intended. Staring at the screen at 10:44 last night after spending hours upon hours pouring over my words and thoughts I'd written, trying to determine if I'd said all I wanted to say, and feeling that creeping guilt growing more and more as I realized that the day was almost over and I still had not lived up to my promise and posted the other half. It was causing me stress, knowing I was pushing past my own deadline. But I just couldn't post it. Something was missing.
I closed my laptop and put Scarlet to sleep, then cleared it from my mind until the morning.
I'm so very glad that I did. I'll explain why by the end.
My procrastination yesterday was two-fold.
First, I kept feeling like I was being too all over the place. Too many tangents. A long path, twisting and turning and not really leading anywhere in particular. Maybe it was the route that was actually important, or maybe I just hadn't reached the destination yet and was simply getting anxious. Imagine me as the embodiment of a toddler in the backseat - screaming, whispering, whimpering, "Are we there yet?"
At the same time, I was seriously tempted to delete all traces of these two posts and pretend they'd never happened. I felt too exposed. I'd been too open, too vulnerable. I'd talked about myself too much. The internet can be a hostile and scary place, except when hardly anyone pays you any mind, in which case you worry that you're screaming into the storm and someone might spit and accidentally hit you because you happened to be loud and in the way.
I was being much louder than I usually allow myself to be and stood waiting for the inevitable spittle to strike my cheek...
When I got up this morning I still hadn't decided what to do about the second half of my post. I'd given myself an extra night to sleep on it and make up my mind.
I opened Scarlet and immediately procrastinated by opening my email instead... then Facebook. I scrolled down the social media mess, my eyes glossing over pictures and catchy comments until I randomly clicked on an article about Neil Gaiman.
I'm sure you probably already know who he is, so I won't bother explaining too much - except to say that I have always admired the brilliant creativity of his work and thought he presented himself like a pretty down to earth kind of person. I respect people like that.
So I clicked the link and read while sipping my second and third cups of coffee, then opened a video of a commencement speech Neil gave which is pretty well known.
The "Make Good Art" speech.
I may have watched it before. I'm sure I probably have, but I don't recall. It doesn't matter, because this time it actually made perfect fucking sense to me. Several things that he said reflected ideas that I had expressed only a day or two before while writing this post.
It changed my mind about hitting the delete key.
So now, before I go off on yet another tangent, let's get back to where I left off in Part I.
I'd realized that by trying to be the best parent and role model I could be for my children, I had sacrificed a large part of what made me who I am.
And I'm not just talking about the way I look, my choice in music, style and superficial stuff on the outside. It's the way these things make me feel - how content I am with myself and my surroundings, how comfortable I am in my own skin - how I express myself in all things. I'd stifled my own creativity to focus on these amazing miniature people who needed me, and had inadvertently made myself into less of a person.
It's the opposite of what I want to teach my children. I want them to embrace their differences, learn from them, make mistakes, be independent individuals and forge their own paths. I want them to make their own choices, be unabashedly themselves and not feel the need to follow the rules and go along with the crowd if it didn't feel genuine to them.
So, this marvel realization left me staring in confusion at my own nose-less face, wondering who the hell did this to me. Who had disfigured my
self so thoroughly without me noticing?
I did it to myself, obviously.
After making the unnoticed shift from
self to
parent, eventually my children were less demanding (but of course, only
slightly less). I started trying to redirect some of my attention back to writing. I'd decided some years before to try self-publishing my work. I loved the idea of having complete creative control but kept putting it off, because back then self-publishing was so taboo that people scoffed and said that it would ruin my chances of a career in the future. I was told publishing my own book would doom everything I wrote afterward with the stench of "not good enough to get properly published".
But it seemed like so much fun! I couldn't get the idea out of my head.
This was shortly before the Amazon Kindle opened up a whole new world for indie publishing, when the advice for D.I.Y. writers was mostly to start your own publishing company, invest in buying ISBNs and literally hand sell your work. I'd done the research, formed a plan and had several half finished novels taking up space on my hard-drive that I needed an excuse to finish. Then I found out I was pregnant with Momo and pushed things off again while I adjusted to this whole new unexpected world of motherhood.
I don't know if I've ever mentioned it before, but I'd never anticipated being a mother or a wife. It was something I'd never even thought about or planned for. It wasn't in my life goals.
So when I plunged into family-life headfirst, the people who knew me longest and best did a bit of that exorcist-style head spinning in surprise. It was a huge detour from where I thought I'd be in my life, but I don't regret it for a millisecond.
My kids are dope-sauce. I can brag about them all day long until my face turns blue.
Doing anything that requires concentration with little kids around is like trying to juggle angry flaming felines while simultaneously trying to stand on one leg, recite the national anthem, and look fabulous while doing it.
Yeah right.
I’m sure it can be done and someone on YouTube will attempt it, but it's really fucking complicated. You might be capable of some degree of coordination and grace, but eventually you’ll end up letting something slide, because dammit that cat just did a back-flip and now your perfectly coiffed mane is singed. The smell of burnt hair assaults your nose, choking your breath and causing you to completely butcher the most moving part of the anthem. Your eyes start to water, you fumble for words, your leg is sore and tired and you just dropped the other cat.
Thank goodness cats usually land on their feet. Now if only you could find a fire extinguisher...
Juggling babies, work and trying to write novels is exhausting. Something is always half-done because there just aren’t enough hours or hands or brain cells to do everything all the fucking time.
But writing is necessary for me. The longer I go without writing the more of an emotionless automaton I become - or at least that’s how I feel. So as soon as I had the chance to focus on writing again I dived in.
But the publishing climate had completely changed. I started looking into it again, re-evaluating my plan from before my daughter was born, only to discover there’d been a self-publishing boom with ebooks. I was elated!
But I didn’t know where to start. I read and researched. I asked questions, read blogs, listened to other writers and self-publishers looking for advice on how to proceed in this new publishing frontier.
I didn’t have a clue what I was doing.
So I learned as much as I could and slowly stepped forward into the world of indie publishing. I kept my head down. I kept my interactions overly professional, because I was terrified someone would smell the stench of noob all over me and I would never be taken seriously. I took advice like studying a rule book on how to not suck. I’d never done that before and it made me feel guilty. I started placing boundaries on myself, forcing ideas of what I should and shouldn’t do to avoid fucking it all up. Things got too rigid and I felt trapped. I failed at everything I tried.
I wasn’t being myself. I was trying to be like the other writers who were succeeding ahead of me, because obviously they knew more than I did.
And every time I failed, I blamed my need to do things my own way. Someone once told me my blog is too dark and readers don’t stick around because they don’t like reading light print on black backgrounds. Or I’m just too boring. Either way, it’s all me.
Same with my blurbs, my covers, my social media gibberish. I was doing it right but getting it wrong. I wasn't being genuine or creative. I was not only not being myself, but I was blaming the bits of myself that inevitably peeked through for my failures. It stopped being fun.
The only fun part was the writing itself.
And I'm done feeling like that. I’m bored with it.
I've been trying to keep my personal and public life separate in a way that feels very fake and impersonal. Bits of my personality have seeped through here and there, but I've always tried to reign it in and keep it safe.
I'm tired of being bound by rules that I don't believe in. I’m tired of acting like a mannequin with no personality just so I don't scare away my audience. I'm tired of worrying about how to get more readers, how to reach people, how to turn this into a career so I can pay my bills and don't have to feel like it's always art vs. feeding my kids. None of it changes anything.
I'm still struggling. Still mysteriously unwell half the time. Still broke. Now the creative thing I love the most has become more business and less fun because I’ve been taking it (and myself) too damn seriously.
Fuck that.
Following the rules hasn’t gotten me anywhere. Where the hell did these rules come from, anyway? I'm going back towards the person I used to be - the woman who expressed herself shamelessly and in everything she did. That’s sounds incredibly pretentious but it’s true.
When I was younger, I sought out life experiences - because if you're not living life, what the fuck do you have to write about?
I'm just gonna wing it and go with what feels right from now on. Mistakes will be made. Lessons learned and not tinged by regret. Most of all, I'm done stressing out about it. My only concern is making the best art I can - writing a good story that feels complete and authentic to my intentions with it. I want to make money to continue doing what I'm doing, but I don't want to do it for the money.
I just want to write.
This blog is my personal online void in the universe... and I'm going to treat it like my house from now on. I'm going to paint the walls, etch poetry in black marker on the windows, strut around in high heeled boots with music shaking the room until we all feel like dancing.
I'm going to unleash myself on you in a way I haven't before because I’m tired of being something I’m not. It may get a little weird in here. I'll just warn you now.
To add a few more obnoxious "I" statements to this unending list I've got going on:
I’m going to go back to being me and I'm going to ignore the rest of it.
I’m going to be the kind of person I would want my kids to respect and learn from.
I think I may have finally come to the end.
Damn, that was a long ride. Took me three days to get to the destination.
Be true to yourself and you’ll have nothing to regret.
Thanks for reading.
