Daydreaming

So, yesterday. Let’s talk about that for a minute.

I wrote a blog yesterday for the Other Place which was, it has to be said, a bit of a surprise. It comes on the back of picking up yet another failed writing project at the start of the weekend and trying (unsatisfactorily) to make something of it. Yet again came the familiar and damning grasp of terror around both brain and heart. You’re not good enough. Stop trying to fool yourself that you are.

Except fuck you Impostor Syndrome, seriously, just go get in the sea and stay there. These ideas are more than good enough, I’m just not mentally capable of the editing task right now. It is like wading through my past, laid out in print, being forced to relive the circumstances behind when these pieces were written, time and again. I am incapable of going back there and doing the work. It hurts too much.

Therefore, it might be an idea to take something totally new and fresh, from scratch, and just see how we can make something worthwhile emerge, using all the skills I’ve learnt in the last eighteen months. No massive plan, just taking an idea I’ve loved for decades, and putting my unique spin on it. Therefore, yesterday, Provocatrix was born. It’s pretty much at the ‘I’m writing this for you stage’ too, and there’s already an ending.

Key to the success of this narrative is that the key plot hinge has been knocking around for over a year, but my brain had ring-fenced it for another project that would have been totally and utterly wish fulfilment. That’s the key, I think: writing needs to be fun, something you enjoy, the ideas not a chore or a concept you think other people might find interesting. If you don’t have fun in the creation, boy does it show.

This isn’t a total about face for me but it is a shift in course. Accepting the shortcomings is normally not as easy (or satisfying) as this has initially turned out to be. Cautious optimism is most definitely the key to progress now but I have the three key protagonists sorted. Who they are and what they do is now their task to show me. I’m looking forward to seeing where we all go, how they react to the narrative’s challenges.

I’m genuinely excited for a long form project, and that’s not happened for some time.