Chloe Cocking craft, day job, ideas, interruptions, novels, personal, writing sucks

COUNTDOWN: 12 Reasons It Took Me 12 Years to Write a Novel

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These are my reasons, they may or may not resonate for you . . .

12. Not certain about what I wanted to say, at least at first

11. Stuck inside the tropes and cliches of urban fantasy, not sure how to write my way out of them

10. Writer’s block (aka panic, anxiety and so on)

9. Not having a writing schedule

8. Not sticking to my writing schedule

7. Going more than three days without writing

6. Certain about opening, certain about ending, uncertain about the mushy middle.

5. Allowing myself to get distracted by Life (secret belief: if I sacrifice my writing practice on the altar of the problem of the moment, the problem will go away and I will *finally* have time and peace of mind to write.) Nope nope nope. Wrongo. The truth is is that life is life, I am me, and those facts are immutable. So write or don’t-write, but forget about me trying to change Life or trying to change my essential nature.

4. Trying advice from all kinds of writers, let them get inside my head such that I thought I was “doing it wrong”. That slowed productivity to a mere crawl.

3. Working 80 hour weeks from 2009 – 2016. stupid stupid girl.

2. Over-ambitious timetable and scheduling leading to overwhelm, overwhelm leading to procrastination, the gnashing of teeth, and yet more writer’s block.

1. Loving writing so much I thought it had to be perfect. Then I found out that “perfect” kills dreams.

Chloe Cocking day job

That’s it, I give up.

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I made a decision twenty years ago.

I decided that I would set creative writing to one side so that I could focus on obtaining what some people would call ‘a real profession’.

Ten years ago, I decided I couldn’t avoid writing any more without some part of me dying, so I started writing creatively again as a ‘hobbyist’.

Being a hobbyist isn’t enough for me.

Having a ‘professional’ job hasn’t gotten me all that I hoped it would. Furthermore, it costs me emotional energy, enthusiasm, and creativity. Having spent those pennies at work, I have little-to-nothing to put into writing projects.

That’s gotten even worse since I started looking for a new (white collar professional) job. I’ve had even less zazz. This is because I experience looking for work to be twice as draining as actually working the job. Writing has slowed to a trickle.  Why in the world should I try so hard for a job I don’t actually want to do?

So I’ve decided to give up.

That’s it. I quit. Don’t want to do it anymore. Not gonna do it anymore.

I hereby resign from the world of white collar professionalism.

Enough is enough.

I am going to get a J-O-B that pays the bills that I can do in my sleep.  Then I will write my ass off.