It's kind of been a stressful few YEARS, if we're being honest.
I've written before about how the pandemic destroyed my writing habits, but I slowly began to write again. I actually ended up putting forth 13,000 words into a new novel and barely began a couple other projects... but all that progress halted when I went back to teaching last year. Since then, I moved, started my M.A. in English, got engaged in my fiance's home country, released and continued to promote my book The Poet's Tarot... and started working for this school year. All during economic turmoil, to boot!
I'm to the point in my life where I can once again see the point in writing. I crave it. I just feel like I have no time, and my time really is limited right now. I'm in a much healthier mental space, but now, very real financial anxiety has replaced my anxiety spirals over less impending matters. I've noticed I've put so much pressure on myself to monetize my writing.
One one hand, this is a good thing: The Poet's Tarot wouldn't have sold even half as much if I didn't focus on the business side of self-publishing. This really does take a ton of time, and my commitment to sales has taken away from writing time.
But the problem runs deeper than that.
This summer, I read Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad by Austin Kleon. While most of the book did not teach me anything new, one particular section stuck with me. Since completing a couple manuscripts and publishing my poetry collection, I put an immense pressure on myself to create publishable pieces. Even though I still find writing fun, I have created financial pressure that was never previously present on the situation. This has been made worse by two particular elements: My second science fiction manuscript, which I am currently querying, came most naturally to me out of any other project despite its size and scale. I seem to expect all writing to come so easily now... and was hugely disappointed when I realized I needed to completely shelve what I now regard as a YA paranormal experiment.
Logically, I understand that this failure of a YA manuscript is not truly a failure. It has some good qualities to it - particularly my ending action sequence. It has vivid characters. But now, I am reworking those characters into a completely new paranormal YA manuscript, and ultimately, this new book is going to work much better. I understand that I needed a failure before this new book could flourish (once I have the proper time to finish it). It just feels so fiscally unproductive in hindsight, and I feel more crunched than ever to produce something valuable despite my current inability to finish anything.
I never used to care about money. I could stay afloat before. But now, I've accumulated so many medical bills, got into a dispute with my landlord, and had some other surprises... I kind of have to care about money now.
I sit down to write, and nothing is good enough. Nothing will ever be good enough if I expect perfection each time I sit down to create something. Nothing will ever come to me naturally if all I do is think about marketing The Poet's Tarot, daydream about how I might put together my next self-published poetry collection (which I'm not totally sure is finished yet and have not had the headspace to fully determine this), and debate whether I will ever actually successfully traditionally publish anything at all (what's the point of finishing any other projects?).
The new novel that I've put down the first 13,000 words? Since I've taken too much time away from it, I've reconstructed all my progress in my head so many times that I now have no idea how those 13,000 words should really go. I know I need to scale back the pacing, but I've come up with too many solutions. Now, I do believe thinking can be a huge part of the writing process, because it constitutes as planning... but in this case, how am I even going to continue to write this story when my mind is so muddled?
I'm sure the answers will come when I no longer feel pressured to create perfection and return to my original mindset, that writing is almost a form of play. It's easier said than done, though, and I am still working on returning to such a serene artistic state.