Lately, I haven’t been updating the site. I haven’t been writing at all. Well, sometimes life kicks you in the head so hard you can’t do much else but focus on what’s in front of you. I’ve moved house, had my work make annoying changes in my shifts, and I’ve been trying to get a better job. While I’ll still be applying for jobs, the job market is still a piece of garbage; so it’s time to get back to writing.
I had been building up the site, to start advertising it, to bring in some regular readers when all this happened. Because I didn’t have any regular readers I felt I could put it on the back burner while I tried to figure out some life changes. It’s not a recipe to succeed to randomly stop doing any work, but I can’t always prioritise things when I have to pay the bills. Trying to build a writing career and needing to eat, clothe, and house oneself are mutually exclusive goals.
I have some stability back in my life again now, so it’s time to put my shoulder to the wheel and start to build something. This means not just writing for the site, but also getting some products up for sale.
It’s the end of July, so I’m going to fill in the site as normal with a blog, 2 flash fictions, a review, a podcast; from now on. I am going to push over the next couple of weeks to get extra work ready and build up a bank so that I can cover when something disrupts daily life. By the 1st of September, I am going to start advertising to bring in readers. By then I need to have at least one piece sent off for consideration by an editor and one piece written and available for purchase as a self-published piece.
It’s funny how there are things in life that we put first. I’m rarely late for work, I have slept in once in more than a year and a half. I put in extra effort at footy to make sure that my word is my bond. If I say I’ll do something I make sure it is done. My writing never seems to find its way into the same category. I have cut plans before and prioritised work or volunteering. It does drill into my brain that maybe I’m not as committed to being a writer, or I don’t really want it that much. But that little voice is just Resistance, as Steven Pressfield would call it, trying to make sure that I only spend my energy on short term goals.
When I go to work I get rewarded every week when I get my paycheck. When I volunteer I get rewarded by being part of a community with a shared goal. Writing brings me neither money nor community, at least in the short term. Building those things is going to take a lot of effort and energy. Resistance has been very successful in the past at stopping me from achieving that. Well, what Resistance doesn’t know is that I like to write for writing’s sake. So even if I don’t ever grow it into anything else, I still get to play with characters and themes, still get to conquer new worlds and meet new aliens, still get to explore the farthest reaches of the imagination.
Whether I can grow my writing into anything more remains to be seen, but it's already fun for me to do. Resistance will never convince otherwise, no matter how many small victories it might have over me.