After completing the full year of posting, alongside 94 other members of Hive, I thought that would be it. I thought that I'd breathe a sigh of relief, and old Lightning McKeys would drop the streak, and leave it there. Yet, here I am. 3 days into year 2, and still writing.
Writer's Block Is For Wimps
This is something I heard before, not that exact phrase, but something similar to it. I can't remember who it was who said it during an interview or spoken word.
They were speaking about writer's block, the dreaded thought that fills authors, writers, and bloggers with anxiety. The same thing can show itself in a slightly different form, affecting musicians, and video content creators. Essentially anything that requires dedication and creativity.
Anyway, during the interview, the person said how they don't believe writer's block exists, and instead believes that forcing yourself to write and doing it on command is the difference between being an amateur and a professional.
They basically said that they see it as an excuse and used the parallel between someone going to their 9-5 job, who goes regardless of wanting to, and they work even though they may not feel like it that day.
When I heard this it came at a really good time - literally just before joining Hive.
At that time I had a bit of writer's block. I had a project I was working on, and while I had put a lot into the project, there was a point where it fell, and my enthusiasm to write waned. 1 week not looking at it turned into 2, then a month, and you get the idea. The digital folder gathered digital dust. The niggling feeling to do some work on it was still there though, prodding me.
Breaking The Block
At this point, I'd like to say that I heard those harsh words of wisdom and grabbed the laptop, triumphantly finishing the story by sunrise and fist-pumping the air.
Nope. I just thought about doing it, and imagined myself picking up the laptop. Then a few days later, as those words echoed in my mind, I went back to it and completed the first draft of the novel. Did I publish it? Nope. See, originally I wrote it as 10 screenplays, which made up 10 episodes of the first season of this cool idea I had. When I finished it I said, who am I? Nobody. No one is going to buy this. But, if I write it as a novel, maybe I could publish it, and then I could potentially get this TV show. That's what I did.
Let me say, re-writing something from a screenplay to a novel is one of the most brutal things I've ever done. Finishing something huge, only to start from scratch again was a killer too, and that ordeal made me never want to write again.
Then I found Hive.
The Crossroad
Hive rejuvenated my love of writing. When I found the place it was about 3 months before writing anything fiction-based, but when I started to do so, my writer's block - in regards to writing fiction - was completely gone.
Being here, and doing last year cemented that old conversation I heard about writer's block. It's possible to control how much you write, and it's possible to get out of a slump.
But, bringing things back to the crossroads I'm at.
I'm 3 days into my second year, and I feel like I can't stop, and that I don't want to stop. I want to continue writing, and I want to keep going. There are other things I want to do, and I feel like the time spent writing could be better spent doing the other things, so I'm stuck.
I thought about it yesterday, and a few things are stopping me from getting started with the videos I want to make.
I have a good camera, I have good lighting, as well as a space to do it in, but the only thing stopping me is the fact that I need to paint the wall opposite my desk, then hang some shelving - which will make for a display area and a pretty snazzy background - as well as shelving, I'm mounting some helmets on the wall above the main display. Apart from that stuff, there are a couple of smaller things I need to do too.
It's going to be so sick, and I'm going to share it when it's done and ready to reveal.
Anyway, these small things I need to do, which will get done over the next few weeks when I buy what I need. Until then, I'm going to keep the steak going, and post, since I'm not ready to do the other stuff for a little while.
There's also the novella that is nearly finished, that's another reason why I want to keep this momentum up. Get that finished, and then compile all of the separate parts into one file, and start doing an edit of it all, before handing it off the a pro to edit, and publish.