Tuesday, May 10, 2011

My All-Consuming Everything

I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve become totally consumed with a new project, to the neglect of my other projects, all of which have started to wither on the vine. I am slowly getting back on track, but not without that dreadful feeling of going back to the same ol’ same ol’. Yet these are the very projects that had that new car smell not long ago.

It happens to me all the time. I can’t seem to stay interested in anything for long. And when something new comes along, I’m all over it. I’m in it for the challenge. It’s like the proverbial “thrill is in the chase” for me. Once I have wrapped my brain around something and understand the logic behind it, my mind starts to wander.

I can’t be happy that I’ve mastered something and just go along being good at it. I’m constantly jumping to the next, more challenging, project, regardless of where I left off with the last. That’s probably why I currently have four writing gigs going at once, in three different genres. Shifting gears like that once or twice a week keeps me from losing interest in any one project. But with the acquisition of my latest job, which pays more than the other three put together, I’m thinking that maybe I should try to devote some time to getting good at just that, and staying that way. At least until the next thing comes along.

I’ve been writing hard for one source for nine months, but I just can’t make it pay. I think that the lack of reward vs. effort has been contributing to my reduction in submissions lately. And for two painful years, I’ve been writing short story after short story, with the best writing group I’ve ever been a part of, but feel like I’ve made marginal progress at best. Did I mention that if I can’t wrap my head around something, I get frustrated and lose interest, too?

Then there’s my blog. I like writing my blog, but feel it is a guilty pleasure - that the time I spend writing it takes away from time I could have been working on a paying gig. Hopefully, now that I’ve got a month’s worth of new writing under my belt, I’ll feel more inclined to give myself a break to get back to some of my other interests. As I said, I’m great at letting stuffy, and sometimes not so stuffy, projects fall by the wayside, but I always get back to the good ones.

Like my blog.

2 comments:

Drew Whitney said...

I like this article. Drew

Just Jane said...

Thanks Drew. Nice to hear from my readers. Just Jane