Week 7: Character Flaw
When you're too busy admiring everyone else's finished work to go write yours.
I have a bad habit of placing others’ achievements, interests and time over my own. I pretend to myself it’s out of kindness but what it really is about is keeping myself safe and protected. Do you do this? (If so comment below - would love to hear!)
Sometimes this is properly placed sentiment. I do truly admire so many of my friends and acquaintances. But I also realize it’s a hindrance because it stops my own forward progression.
When I talk to friends with professional careers, I admire how they knew at such a young age what they wanted. I look at my own daughters with the same admiration. One wants to be an entertainment lawyer because intellectual property fascinates her and she has been on film and tv sets her entire life thanks to my husband’s work. My other daughter is an actress who wants to go to business school, but she acts because she enjoys it and because communication is a life skill.
It’s interesting to me that nowadays you can have varied interests and they all intersect at some future crossing, with the ability to increase abundance in ways that feel organic. Growing up in the 90s, it felt like if you didn’t have that one thing, you lost out on all things.
What if you didn’t have that one thing? What if the uncertainty was a gift of learning about many subjects and situations others don’t quite understand and because of that, you now teach something interesting and different?
What if that tarnish on the crown is actually the most valuable jewel in the setting?
This week felt like “Maycember.” I don’t have little kids anymore and a string of recitals to get to, but life is just as busy.
This week alone I moved our daughter home from her freshman year of college. My younger daughter had an audition for a new TV show, volleyball tryouts, and a chemistry final. My husband is a time zone away and in three days will have the first shoot of season 2 of his tv show. I have a larger volunteer role at school next year and this week there was a reception, a luncheon, and a meeting, plus a mahjong night because I am learning and loving it!
All this to say: the writing had to continue anyway. Because it’s what I love most outside my family and friends.
This week I stole time from my day to write, to dream, and to decide what stays and what goes in the manuscript. I also decided that writing needs to become a little more social. I found some local author meetups to explore this summer and took screen shots of the event schedules at the local bookstores.
My older daughter is an English major and is currently writing a thriller. When we talk about her scenes, I am giddy with excitement. It’s so fun hearing her process and how she comes up with her storylines. My younger daughter picks up a script and becomes the character in small, specific ways that makes you think you’re looking at someone else entirely. I want to write characters like that someday. Characters someone can play as easily as putting on a coat, layering a person onto who you are until it’s completely believable.
I wonder what their lives will look like, since they don’t share my flaw. They compare themselves only to themselves. They ask whether they can be better than yesterday, while knowing they are already whole exactly as they are today.
That’s ours to claim too.
Being busy but finding peace. Writing our thoughts without judging them. Knowing that a book doesn’t need to win a prize to be useful and that it will open new doors, if we let it.
If you compare yourself to others to the point that you stop moving forward, consider this an invitation to let that go. If writing is a dream, make it your reality by buying the journal and holding the pen. Others’ past achievements can be your future inspirations.
WEEK 7 BOOK WRITING UPDATE
What’s working: I feel like a broken record on repeat but my outline is working. If I don’t know what to write I just follow along and it works well. I continue to move things around but that’s ok. I realized the lesson I give on AI and modern writing needs to move up to the outline stage because I use it only as a research assistant for my ideal reader. In my First Draft Friday class we had it as week 7 but that is too late in the book.
What got done: Weeks/chapters 7 and 8 are in the book and rough.
What felt hard: The messy middle! I literally went back to writing some fiction this week and when I started chapter 7 and how the messy middle makes you want to seek new projects I realized that was exactly what I was doing. The novel is on hold until summer!
What surprised me: The novel being reintroduced into my writing sequence. I forgot how much I love the characters and I want to write about them again.
Next week: Take some more time with chapters 7 and 8. I have 6 more weeks to draft this and I am on target. My plan keeps being refined but here is what I’m thinking:
5/22: 7 & 8
5/29: 9 & 10
6/5: 11 & 12
6/12: Revise
6/19: Full first draft done and read through
6/26: Full first draft complete and start to edit
I plan to talk to my publisher on 7/1, Jessica DeBry about next steps. My goal is to publish in Q4!
On Fridays, We Write. ✍️
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