Writing Is Kind Of A Bitchy Mistress

So, it's Thursday. Which means you should be looking at a new installment of Glyphs. Yet there is no new installment in sight. Sadly, there isn't going to be one any time soon either. Sigh.

I fought with myself about this all weekend and most of this week, but I finally had to admit to myself what I have  known pretty much since I started posting this story online. It just isn't happening. As of now Glyphs is officially on hold. I don't know when I will start it back up again. I certainly hope that I do, I can tell you that much. Writer's Podium Thursday is, in fact, also going away for the time being. I haven't quite decided yet what I am going to change my Thursday posts to. Until I decide, they are gonna be anything goes along the lines of the Friday posts. I've got a lot of great books waiting for me to read them, and I am hoping to finally be in a place where I can make myself take time to do that, so I might start doing more book reviews. It is one possibility I am looking at. In fact, let's just call it "Multimedia Thursday" and make that the home for all things TV, books, video games, or movies. Yeah, okay, that works.

I am truly, truly sorry to any of you who had started reading Glyphs and were looking forward to more. The story is there, in my head. I know what happens, I have the whole arc outlined and written out. I toyed with going ahead and putting that up in this space, but that would feel even more like giving up than just putting the project on hold, and I am not ready to give up on this tale just yet.

I follow the blogs of several writers, and many of them have expressed a philosophy that goes something along the lines of: "If you truly want to be a writer, you will make the time to write. You will find a way to do it."

I firmly believe that philosophy. And here's the thing, I do make/find the time to write, you are reading my blog after all, and it is updated five days a week. It's just that what I am writing these days isn't a story. I still have story ideas all of the time. Heck, the other day and idea came to me and I thought, hey, if I wrote Mass Effect fan fiction, this would be an excellent idea. That's just an example, by the way, not all of my ideas are for fan fiction. Not that I would be complaining if they were, because if I was writing fanfic I would at least be writing a story. It can be much less stressful to play in someone else's sandbox for a while, you know?

I got really excited about Glyphs and I jumped right into the deep end with it. Unfortunately I didn't make sure to stretch first, and I got all cramped up once in the water. It was easy enough to find things to blame for the lack of progress, to be sure. My playthrough of Dragon Age was certainly a distraction. But then I finished that, and I started finding other excuses not to work on the story. I randomly decided to start reading a webcomic with 1200 strips under its belt from the very beginning (um, in an entirely unrelated note, Girls With Slingshots is complete and total awesome-sauce, go check it out), I have assembled furniture, I started freaking exercising so I would have go to bed earlier (meaning I couldn't stay up to write after my daughter goes to bed). I mean, come on. When you start exercising to avoid doing something, that's a sign.

On top of all of that? I've been done with my playthrough of Dragon Age less than a week and I already kind of want to play it again. I also really want to start another playthrough of Mass Effect (which is why I was thinking about it enough to come up with a fanfic idea). Can't write and play a video game concurrently. At least I can't. For those of you wondering, the logic behind that is this:

When I write a story, I need to be able to just sit down and do it, with no distractions. The period of time in my average day when I can do this? When my daughter is a asleep, which means during naptime (when I do have other stuff I need to get done as well) and either staying up late after she goes to bed, or getting up early before she does (can't really do both of those).

When I play a game, I tend to get really into it and zone out most of what is going on around me. This is less than ideal if I am also supposed to be keeping an eye on my daughter. Thus, the time available for me to game is...when my daughter is asleep.

I think you see the conflict here.

Thing is, and this really was hard to admit to myself, right now I would rather play video games (or possibly reading a book) than be writing a story. I would rather get lost in someone else's world than try to create one of my own at this current stage in my life.

It makes me happier.

Do I expect this to last forever? Hell no. Do I still consider myself a writer. Yes. Very much so. Writing is an integral part of who I am. I don't think I will ever stop considering myself a writer. Like I said before, I do still make the time to write. Just because it isn't what I feel like I should be writing doesn't make it less valid. I am a grown woman (as much as I hate to admit it sometimes) and I am not only capable, but I am totally allowed to make these kinds of decisions for myself. As much as I believe the "if you really want it to happen, you will make it happen," philosophy I also very much believe that if something is just not there, forcing it won't make anything better. I still feel a bit like even just putting this story on hold is a huge failure on my part. When I told this to my husband he pointed out that if you never fail at anything then you aren't pushing yourself hard enough. He's got a point.

I truly believe I have another story in me that needs to be told. Glyphs is not that story. At least not right now. I don't know what that story is, but I am willing to wait for it to make its journey to me.

So, thanks for sticking around to read this. I hope no one is too disappointed that Glyphs won't be continuing here.

I'll try to come up with something interesting to fill its place.