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You Can Have All the “Big Ideas” in the World and Still Be Creatively Empty
I’m a vessel for the words, but what happens when the well dries up?
I struggle as a writer every day.
Oh, I have ideas — probably too many of them to tackle for an expected lifespan — but I get bored with them as easily as if I were a spoiled little girl with too many Barbies. What seems sparkly and fun one day will be dull and mundane the next.
A writer friend of mine once said to me, “It’s like you’re a mom with too many kids. You don’t devote enough attention to any of them.” Even though those words are over ten years old, I’ve kept them locked inside my heart and still feel the truth of them every single day.
Maybe that’s why, despite having made attempts for over a decade, I still have yet to complete writing a full novel draft. Though I would praise myself for superficial goals like writing 10K words in less than a week, none of it ever mattered in the long run. I could do sprints, but the actual marathon of a novel? No, I haven’t succeeded there yet. Not by a long shot.
(Some context: the only year I “won” NaNoWriMo was back in 2011. That’s quite a long losing streak, don’t you think?)
