I’ve been struggling lately with my manuscript, Hot Mess #1. I made a bit of a breakthrough last night, but I didn’t do anything in December and January has been a slow start.
My laundry list of excuses includes:
- Several instances of snow, which somehow made it impossible to write.
- Illness, where I spent several days on the couch watching “The Crown and also unable to write.
- New commitments, which take up one evening a month, rendering the rest of my evenings impossible for writing.
- A new morning workout schedule, which makes no other hours of the day available for writing.
But probably most important
- Icky feelings after my last workshop.
I never really gave a voice to that last one until I grabbed lunch with a friend today and mentioned my lack of motivation in writing. Logically, my workshop was great. I loved everyone in it, got valuable feedback, got plenty of work done and had fun. I was motivated and inspired to write. The instructor was awesome and it was worth every penny.
Yet I still ended the 6 week workshop just hating my story and completely unmotivated to complete the edits on it. Writing, I have learned, is much more fun than editing. It seems that I prefer to draw a picture than put together a puzzle, which is what I feel I’m doing with these edits and rewrites. I focused on edits with this workshop, and will with the next one, so it felt like chores.
I was processing this when I saw the following image on Facebook:
I’ve said several times in this journey that my story is better than my writing skills, which always made me feel better. I hope that I will improve in my writing every day, and creativity is harder to learn.
So when I saw this, it reminded me to be patient. I hope I don’t have to wait another 30 years before I’m good enough to release my manuscript into the world, but I know that if I keep working at it, I’ll get better. My manuscript will get better. And some day, it’ll be good enough!
The Merry Manuscript 