Image by Midjourney
I had a funny dream last night. I was watching a middle-aged woman who just looked so tired and done with it all, and she was writing a document on a computer in kind of a NaNoWriMo (now renamed Novel November) style. You know what I mean--there's a daily quota and a schedule, and it has to be adhered to or else.
As I watch this woman type and click, I can feel how she just wants to get her "work" for the day over with.
That woman kinda represents me! I want to enter my writing into a contest with a deadline, so I worry that if I don't make consistent, disciplined progress on the piece every day, I won't have anything to submit. But I have a hard time staying consistent and disciplined and focused on personal projects sometimes. I have more writing projects that I've started and not finished than I would like. Having a bunch of projects left hanging scatters the attention of my unconscious mind. Some part of my brain will wish it was working on a brand new mermaid project. Some part of my brain will want to brainstorm short story ideas for the third Satyr Plays. Some part of my brain will wish it was revising the third Dream Diary. Another part of my brain is wondering when I'm going to get back to working on my goal of making 100 YouTube videos. Etcetera.
So there's a kind of drudgery in the writing I'm working on right now. It's not a passion project. I just want to have something to submit. I wonder if this is going to wind up being a high-quality piece of writing if it's kind of a joyless experience to create it.
I feel as though that uncertainty shouldn't stop me though. You never know the outcome of your actions. You can only do the work.
It seems as though it's getting harder and harder to plan for the future right now. So much unemployment/underemployment. So much economic uncertainty. AI. Policy changes. But artists have always faced tremendous uncertainty and poor odds about the outcome of their efforts. So you'd think I would be used to all this by now.
