Life, Procrastination, Realization, and why a 50,000 goal isn't just for novels

I have been silent for a while on this here my blog. That's a bad sign. Why? Because it means I haven't been writing. Granted, life has gotten a bit in the way. But really that's just a way to say I'm a procrastinator.

Well shoot. I already knew that about myself. After all, I did (and do) my best work at the 11th hour (or should I say the hours between 1 and 3 am? ;) ), while burning both ends of the candle (how many metaphors can I fit into this?).

That's why NaNoWriMo is so good for me. After all: it gives me a clear and steady deadline.

This past year, I chose not to do NaNoWriMo. Not because I don't have a thousand story ideas calling out to me from the ethers of my mind (au contraire, mon ami!), but I felt I owed it to my two previous novels to really hunker down and get to some serious revising.

That lasted all of three days until...I ordered new A clarinets to test out...(*note: that is not a typo, I ordered clarinets in the key of A, as in not Bb clarinets.)

On the plus side, I have a fantastic and beautiful new instrument to play. The downside, of course, my writing greatly suffered.

So November passed in a blur of instruments,  December in a flurry of holidays with no snow, January hit and suddenly I turned a year older (seriously, how is it that 27 actually feels older?). My brother temporarily moved in with us (which totally threw off my groove) and my grandfather passed away. And forget February, that's an entirely separate beast all of its own: SOLO/ENSEMBLE. And while it was worth every minute I spent working with my students (it totally paid off! State here we come!), I found myself at the end wondering why yet another month disappeared.

I sit here now, though, fully aware that it's March. And I'm okay with that. Here's why:

A few weeks ago I realized that while I may list a thousand reasons for why I'm not working on my writing and while I may be an inherent procrastinator, here is the real truth as to why I hadn't started seriously revising:

I had absolutely no idea where to start.

I had a full-blown draft of a novel (two, actually), and every time I sat down to edit or revise or do anything besides stare at words...I just felt completely overwhelmed. In all the years of writing I took in college, in all the years I've counted myself a writer (since I was about 3...) I have never truly been taught by myself or anybody how to revise anything longer than a short story.

Thankfully, I remembered I bought Scrivener. One day I sat down and inputted my stories. I felt pretty darn pleased with myself. Days passed. That dreadful overwhelming feeling started to creep back into my system.

Then I realized something else:

I don't have to work on the entire novel at once! 

I know, I know, this seems like such a simple concept. But it's akin to realizing that I didn't have to start at the beginning either. More importantly, Scrivener is set up in such a way that I can just isolate scenes and work on sections or subsections — whatever inspires me that day.

Renewed, I finally started tampering with words. Even deleting some. Heck, today I removed an entire sentence! (It was a bit superfluous after all.) I felt so empowered, so good about how much I accomplished that I even felt I'd written something good enough to allow my husband to read one scene. And if you know anything about me and my writing, you know how incredibly private I keep it.

So there you have it folks. I'm recommitting to my writing: one scene at a time.

Meanwhile, I've also taken the idea of 50,000 words and translated it into my practice-time on my clarinet. As of last week, I start a 50,000 hour practice log countdown. It will probably take my entire lifetime to accomplish (hey, it's more realistic than using my serial number on my instrument: 633994!). But I need goals and deadlines. I thrive on those. And after only a week, I am down to 49,990.50

Moral of the story?

Well, I don't know. I haven't finished revising it yet. ;)