There are things you don’t realize you need until you don’t have them. Then again, sometimes you have to have something in order to find out that you don’t have it in the first place. There’s a circular nature to figuring out our needs, wants, haves, and have-nots. All these things that make us not only human, but writers.
One of the things I didn’t know I needed until I had it again was writer friends, people that I could talk to about writing, about projects, about insecurities, and doubts. And over the course of the last couple of months and this weekend in particular, I was able to spend sometimes short sometimes long periods of time with people that really understood what I was going through.
The key point is that these writer friends were individuals in their own right and had their own styles and their own ideas of what it meant to be a writer. And it wasn’t that those contrasted or complimented my own ideas, but that they respected that each one of us will come to this craft differently.
One of the reasons I was lacking writer friends is because I’ve had some who felt a need to impose their idea of what it means to be a writer upon you. Conversations that always had shoulds and or ought tos in them. Conversations that should be listened to politely and taken lightly.
I am one to be self reflective at times and I try to catch every should and ought to that I say to someone else, no matter what the subject. My apologies if I don’t catch them all.
Suffice to say I felt the surge of motivation over the weekend but it didn’t necessarily result in a lot of new words but a culling of ideas. I have too many projects (I’ve said this to you before) too many things to work on, too many switches in my focus so that nothing ever gets done.
Just in casual conversation I was able to narrow down my focus to four projects, one of which is near completion. Just by removing a couple of areas of focus, I feel freer and lighter and more like I want to work.
No longer were my writing projects this unending laundry pile of tasks that I needed to do. It was a small section of a larger world that I could chip away at and enjoy and learn and develop and become a better writer in the process. Even today I wrote something that wasn’t part of any of those projects but it was quick and short and it’s complete. It’s finished. It’s done.
Done is wonderful.
Stay tune for more done.
Edit: Sorry, Dan.
B.R. Black 