writing and attitude. don't upset your muse.

I've told you about how I'm slow, about how these fantasy projects have taken a long time to come together. I had writer's block, and then many false starts, and I've often felt like I'm starting all over again and that my career is vanishing (sigh).

Here's something I've learned: if I sit down at my little writing desk and stare at my laptop filled with frustration and self-loathing, then I'm done before I've even started. I've done this; writing became a routine punishment. I would sit down, my thoughts screaming: "Figure it out! What is your problem? Just sit down and figure this book out and write it, for pete's sake!" And I hated myself, and I hated everything I wrote. No matter how fantastically awesome that basic idea may have been, I was destroying it with my attitude, and my general lack of inspiration. But why would the muse have wanted to visit me in that frame of mind? My muse is a skittish, dreamy creature. She doesn't want to hang out with me when I'm in self-pity mode.

I still want this book to work out. I still have a huge, crushing desire to write another book (not just a pile of pages I'll shut up in some desk drawer with a disgusted sigh) and to get a contract, get it published. But my book doesn't want to hear those thoughts. My book wants me to sit down at my writing desk because I want to write. Not because I want the work done yesterday, but because I actually want to settle in and enjoy the work. This attitude adjustment doesn't ensure that I'll produce something great, wonderful, finished, but it means that I might produce something worth working on. And I won't be a miserable creature in the process.