Writing... maybe

I know I haven't mentioned it before (in the whole two posts that I've done thus far), but I am an aspiring writer. (Or did I mention it? God, now I can't remember... wait. Yes, I did mention it. Whoops.) As an aspiring writer, writing should take up most of my free time, right? I should want to do it as soon as I wake up, and all day long after that.

Sadly, that does not seem to be the case. While I do want to write, I just don't sit down and do it. I think about it, brainstorm, pine for it...but I don't actually write. Why? Because writing is damn hard. It requires so much thought and concentration. Also, I'm not really one of those writers that just sits down and vomits up a whole bunch of excellent prose (or even mediocre rambling) in one sitting. It's not that word-vomiting isn't an effective method - I'm sure it is for the people who can do it - it's just that it's impossible. For me, I mean. I pore over every sentence, edit it twelve times, and then end up deleting it because I just can't get it to sound the way I wanted it to. To get a single page done takes hours, if not days.

Also, there's the whole thing with being distracted by Dexter/Legolas. We've already discussed that.

It's frustrating, because - despite the compulsive editing - I know I can write more than I currently am. In November, I participated in a writer's program called National Novel-Writing Month. The goal of the program is to write 50,000 words between November 1st and November 30th (otherwise known as "a month.") Since a friend of mine and I usually partner in writing, we took on the challenge together. And we succeeded. We even came away from it with a pretty solid 35-page prologue to the novel we've been trying to start for years.

But after November... I think I would be exaggerating if I said I wrote 10,000 words. It's probably nothing close to that. Meaning I've written basically nothing for two whole months, which is a HUGE WASTE. Sometimes that happens, though. I have a really good stretch of productivity, and then... nothing. I keep calling it writer's block, but I really don't think it's that. Writing is intimidating, but not impossible. It's probably just laziness.

Laziness wouldn't bother me so much if I didn't feel I was on a timeline. You see, I'm moving to California in two months' time. And that friend I write with? She'll be in Minnesota. I know the internet is a wonderful invention with the ability to connect people across vast distances with the click of a button, but... it's soo much easier to collaborate when you're face-to-face. And we won't have that anymore. It's kind of a scary thought. Combined with the laziness, the distance could slow down our writing to, well, whatever is slower than the love-child of molasses and a tortoise. (Cannot even imagine what that would look like.)

If you need a little perspective on how slow our progress is sometimes, here you go:

In 2003 (junior high, for us), we started a Pirates of the Caribbean fanfiction entitled "Two Captains." (Yes, I am aware fanfiction is uber-nerdy, but hey, we were young 'uns at the time, so give us a break.)

We just finished said fanfiction in March of last year (2010, for those of you who didn't know.)

That is SEVEN FRIGGIN YEARS. TO FINISH A FANFICTION.

THAT IS A LOOOOONG TIME.

(If I were going to give us some credit, I would tell you that said fanfiction is over 180,000 words long and actually becomes a decent piece of writing as you get to the later chapters. But you wouldn't listen to me anyway, would you? You're still focused on how nerdy fanfiction is.)

(You know what? I don't care what you think. I still like fanfiction. Sometimes.)

I am terrified that our novel (which we have been brainstorming on for over seven years already) will turn into that fanfiction: this thing that hovers over our heads for years and years, gets done at the rate of about a page a month, never gets written, and never goes away. I DO NOT WANT THAT. I want to be a writer. I cannot think of anything else I would rather be, or even kind of want to be. But I cannot be a writer if I never get anything done!

I guess the whole point of this point of this post (rambling as it was) was to say that I NEED TO WRITE.

Which probably means that I should stop blogging and get to it, right?