I was chatting to my son this morning. He’s working remotely at the moment and has been since February. He works in the games industry and was up until midnight working and then played games until 1.30am. My comment was-you’re lucky you are passionate about your work.
And then I thought, why aren’t I feeling passionate at the moment? When I’m passionate about something, I can’t stop doing it.
I’m feeling flat and conflicted and I need to think about where my passion is.
I’ve been querying agents and that’s a passion killer for sure. The hope entailed in querying agents is not a passion killer. It can excite and motivate. However, it does take time and focus. Being a possible ADHD person, I get a little hyper focused. Lol. Maybe my passion is all hyper focus and I’m deluded.
I’ve put a damper on querying new agents at this time. The ones I have queried will wind up by December and then if it’s all a bit zero, I’ll think of my next steps for the Phd novel in the new year. I’m going to write down a strategy. It’s not a good time to try to sell something different! This was said to me by someone in the know and I think this is the spark to my downward spiral. I appreciate the bluntness and then I have to deal with the fallout. Even though I tell myself. It’s just this one book. You have others drafted and good ideas for new ones. Don’t sweat it.
But I do sweat it.
I don’t know how people can write and then try to sell their work. I mean it takes so much time, energy and focus that I can barely do anything else. That’s why agents are good (if you can get one) because they sell your books, in theory. But this is only part of my issue.
I’m in PhD land and I will get back to the next draft of the exegesis next week and that will last until December. I think I will find my passion there again once I warm up because I’m closer to the end!
I have a weaving project that I have yet to attack with gusto, a garden project that we will start working on again on the weekend and a few novels in need of revision and lots of ideas bubbling away. Distracting maybe? Actually having manuscripts to revise are a mixed bag of guilt and a kind of treasure. Guilty because you haven’t looked at them in years. Fear because you know how much work you need to get them to a publishable level and a bit of smug because you have WIP that you can whip out and sell or publish if you want. But the weight of guilt and workload do put a dampener on writing a new project. NaNoWriMo is coming up and I’m like I could start a new project! And my dizzy brain trucks out these unfinished ones and points. See those? Finish these you lazy cow!
Yesterday, I did work on a revision for a couple of stints (I’m nearly a third of the way through this SF Romance), and did a bit on the weaving project (dressing the loom is the physically difficult part) and bought things for the garden project (that I’m hoping other people will do the work), but I’m still feeling flat but not quite a lizard drinking flat.
You think I would be happy I achieved something right? No! Because it’s not good enough! I’m never good enough. I can always do better or more. Don’t you love that internal voice, the purveyor of doom, the blame-o-meter?
Is it just Covid-19, the state of the world (being into post-apocalyptic fiction the current world news is fuelling my imagination in a bad way) or just a personal down?
I told myself yesterday that at least I wasn’t on the couch watching the screen all day but really that’s not much of a pat on the back.
I love being passionate, being in the moment and zinging along with what I’m doing. It’s like a drug! A high.
But really writing is all about hard work. I love first drafts, revisions are okay if the ideas are still coming and third drafts are hard work but so important and part of the crafting. I think this is a stage where I always start getting new ideas and being frustrated. I start devising ways to work on multiple projects and I know this doesn’t work. To work on the second draft of the exegesis I had to do only that. No writing anything else. I had to let it fill up my mind so all I was doing was thinking about that. And because I haven’t finished the damn Phd yet, I can’t really start a new project. Hah! That’s definitely a problem for me.
Maybe I need one of those ‘what am I grateful? for moments. I’m in good health (except the knees!), my family are in good health, Canberra where I live has no active Covid-19 cases, we can go out (within reason and socially distance) and our incomes are pretty secure. We’ve just put a deposit on an EV car that should be here in 6 months. I should be disco dancing in the shower! I’m grateful for all of that but no dancing today.
I’m a confessed passion junkie! Or as my friend Alisa said to me last year-you know you’ve got ADHD right? And the light went on, but that passion junkie aspect is so much a part of me and I miss being deep into something. Even if it was just like five minutes ago when I stopped.
The thing is I’m looking for passion somewhere external but it’s in me. Circumstances conspire to dampen my passion and I need to realise it will be there when I want it, that I haven’t lost it–it’s on a short break. And it’s normal to be floaty between projects or periods of frenetic activity. It’s a natural balancing act that lets my passion ferment so I have some for the next thing, the next shiny thing, that I focus on.
I need to stop searching for my passion because it’s in me. There are plenty of things I am passionate about and that’s probably my issue. Too many things. Too many exciting things and only one lifetime.
Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing 