I have what is probably a fairly typical writer’s relationship with what is “good enough,” which is to say, “It’s not good enough.”
Whatever it is.
In some ways, this is a good thing, and I don’t want to lose it entirely; right now, it’s that nudge in my brain that’s saying, “Okay, you now write this well; it’s time to make further progress. What are you going to do next?”
Without dissatisfaction, there is no progress.
However, while dissatisfaction can make a potent tool, it @#$%^& sucks as a master. I’m not going to go into detail here, because wow, that would take either a lifetime of therapy or a book series.
Anyway, last night, while on my quest to improve my writing, I was reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, and took a break to freewrite, as recommended. My pen basically took over the page. One of the things that came out of it was that I don’t think I’m good enough to deserve to travel. I remember listening to people’s stories about travelling around the world since I was a kid and thinking, “That’ll never happen to me. Why should it?”
Well, that can’t possibly be productive.
Every time I travel–even if I’m moving houses–I love it. The fact is, I don’t need to deserve to travel in order to do it. Plenty of slaptards go gallivanting about just because they can. And finally, I am a freelance writer now, and I can travel for business purposes. Yes, it would probably be better for me if I just broke down and took a vacation, but frankly the idea gives me the heebie jeebies. Also, I get bored, I don’t have the money, and it still thrills me to be able to write legitimate things off as a business expense..
–Before you laugh at me or tell me how easy it is to travel, have a good look at your own hangups and how easy it is to get around them. This is part of mine, and if it were easy, I would have done it years ago. Basically, if I don’t get to hurt myself by telling myself what a loser I am for feeling like I don’t deserve to travel, then I won’t give anyone else permission to do it, either.
So here are the next steps:
- Get passports for everybody in my family set up.
- Start saving money for a trip to Scotland (an actual vacation that we’ve been discussing for years), as a priority.
- Commit to going to GenCon this year and finding a way to sell books there or otherwise make it a business trip.
- Commit to taking a trip for a writer’s workshop or other writer-training thingy.
Additional suggestions are welcome, although I may have a brief meltdown in which I go, “I can’t do THAT” for a minute.