The new year is just newly born and the time for goal setting and reflection is upon us. I have decided that 2009 is the year of challenging and breaking through more self imposed limitations, specificially with my yoga practice and more relevantly to this blog, with writing.
I have been the consummate creative dabbler, never really pushing myself often enough to finish projects because, well, because I get stuck in thoughts about how many other fantastic artists there are out there and how unlikely it is that my work will ever be published and that there are so many writers scraping by out there who are better, more talented, more dedicated and so on. Of course there are grains of truth to this dialogue and it could be that none of the fiction I write is ever published, but it definitely will never be published if I never finish projects.
So with cynicism and skepticism riding heavily on my shoulders, I am going to challenge myself to the following goals as a beginning:
2. Incorporate changes and write a second draft.
3. Repeat step 1 and 2 for as many times as it takes to write a finished draft.
4. Send the finished manuscript to Amazon for the special deal they are offering the 'winners', which is a proof copy of the book.
5. If satisified with the final result, send it out to either agents or publishers.
Through this process I will learn a lot about the process of FINISHING A BOOK, and gain valuable knowledge. If it never gets published, I can at least have a couple of trusted friends read it and provide serious feedback and/or take a fiction writing workshop to improve my chops.
That is my pledge to myself. Already that queasy feeling is arising from the inner doubter in me who wants nothing more than for me to never risk growing in any direction. As an 'antidote' I will think about all of the people who never have a chance to realise their dreams because of real circumstances, not just self-fabricated ones. Right now I am thinking of the hundreds of people who recently died in Gaza and the thousands who were injured. Many of those will be deeply wounded by long term trauma. I think of all of the people throughout time who have been torn physically, psychologly and spiritually by trauma and I send them a prayer of healing and peace. I center myself in gratitude and strength, which is after all the roots of love and compassion. I am grateful that my path in this life has been a relatively smooth one compared to many others.
Creativity is the ultimate radical act because it affirms life.
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