Preemptive Retaliation

I am in a weird spot just now.

Where to begin.

For the past few weeks I’ve been writing almost every day. I’m back on my bullshit again where I’m weaponising my anxiety to get some work done. It’s a new project, and I’m filled with that initial excitement that comes to dedicating time to a new project. Ideas are fast and plentiful, and all of them good. When I write I just hammer away and let one scene fall into the next, introducing hugely important characters at a whim and making sudden changes to the scene and setting to suit my story. It’s the first draft, the first run through, it doesn’t have to be good. But it’s fun.

So far it’s about an AI program who opens a gallery populated with AI generated art. The kicker is that they are posing as a human, and have purposefully recreated the AI style of art in their work. The whole thing is a big joke, but I’m finding myself contemplating the definition of art, imposter syndrome, humanity, etc, etc, etc. It’s good and it’s fun and it’s interesting to write.

But I think it’s just a distraction. When I got the idea I was finalising the changes to The Making Of. I had rewritten the first ten thousand words – chopping and cutting and rebuilding with the pieces that remained – and I wanted the prose to sit for a bit. I stuck it to one side and started working on something just as important but ten times as daunting; the pitch. I really like The Making Of. I think it’s a good story with a lot to say, and a lot of clever little ways in which it says it, and that’s all well and good but I need to be able to get people to read it too. And for that I need to convince people to read it. Maybe convince someone to publish it.

I didn’t get very far in this endeavour. I wrote a one page summary which I thought was ok, and read that I had to narrow that down and down until I could come up with an elevator pitch – something that can be thrown at someone in thirty seconds and help them decide if they’re interested. It helps if I can Die Hard it (this film is Die Hard on a boat, this film is Die Hard on a plane) and the best I can come up with is “It’s like Synecdoche, New York combined with Whiplash” which I honestly think is a pitch perfect one-liner, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m referencing films rather than books. Maybe it’s “If Sally Rooney had an argument with Paul Auster” which, as soon as I’ve written that down, I’m kind of in love with.

Still – I was doing work on it. I was putting in the hard graft, if you will. Being a writer is about the whole package, you know? It’s not just the storytelling, it’s the sitting down and writing. It’s not just the sitting down and writing, it’s completing the damn thing. It’s not just about completing it, it’s about selling it. It’s not just selling the book, but selling a version of you on social media. And so on. And so on.

So of course it’s right when I’m doing this important, needed, ultimately boring work, that I am struck with a brand new idea and immediately get on it. I’ve written about ten thousand words in the last three weeks which isn’t bad. But I haven’t done anything with The Making Of.

I am in more weird spots at the moment. Weird spots at a difficult workplace, weird spots where I’m strangely withdrawing from friends, weird spots with time and energy and fun. But I prefer to think of the weird spot within writing, mostly because it’s a positive weird spot. Oh no! I’m writing a new project and have an already completed one that I’m still really excited for! Oh woe!

The thing is that… I know this is down to that anxiety again. The same one that I’ve weaponised is the one that is forcing me not to look at my rewrites. What if what I’ve done is bad? What if I don’t like it? What if no one likes it and no one wants to read my book? What if it never gets published?

A tale as old as time.

I need to get back to it.