I used to have a lot more... muchness. I think I've lost it somehow. I used to be much more... mucher.
I'll try to put this little revelation into proper, understandable words. The key word there is 'try'.
So, this really started because NaNoWriMo is getting closer. (National Novel Writing Month, in case you didn't know for some reason.) That means 30 days spent writing. 1,667 words a day. I've written 100k in a month before so that seems fairly easy now. I love NaNoWriMo, okay? I love the gut-wrenching anxitey, the countdown to midnight on the very first day, the stupid dares and challenges on the forums. I love the aches and pains, I love the sleepless nights and caffeine overloads. I love the feeling of having that countdown timer always running in the background and, maybe more than that, knowing that I wasn't the only one who could see it.
I was trying not to like the whole NaNoWriMo thing for a while but I'm starting to feel like the link between me and crazy, stupid, artistic crap is just never going to be severed. In actuality, this is probably a good thing.
So, I figured 'eh, why not?' and since I had an account under my 'new' name (Rabbit), I just filled in the details. and then I made my first mistake: I got caught up looking around the forums and remembering how great it is when everyone's around and writing and complaining gently and not-so-gently about life and word count.
Mistake two came a bit later when I remembered the Night of Writing Dangerously, which is this amazing social event/write-a-thon thing held in San Fransisco. In a ball room. On the fifteenth floor. This year's theme is 'Noir' and you don't have to dress up but you can if you want to, and I've wanted to go for years but I've never had the money and we usually lived much farther away than we do now.
The third mistake came from looking over another WriMo-er's blog (and watching the NaNoWriMo Musical). And it occurs to me that, for all my good ideas, I'm not getitng anything done because not only do I not have the self-confidence that allows me to stand up and say 'I am talented, I have something to say, and I deserve to be noticed', I also don't have the same artistic fire that I used to. There was a time
It takes me forever to read a book, I haven't actually finished writing anything over about 2.5k, even non-fiction articles (which really don't require much thought anyway) take me way longer than they should.
But why?
Is it possible that a lack of a strong community could really make that much difference? Or is the root of the problem deeper? Possibly, I'm holding myself back because I'm afraid of what I can do. It's also possible that my lack of confidence is rooted more in a dislike of what my life currently is, not what it has the potential to be.
Whatever the reason, this is something that warrants investigating. I'm getting tired of not being dangerous.
