The AsCast Jar

Excuse me while I indulge in a little self-therapy.

Hi, I’m Tasty. And I’m in a writing rut.

I’ve updated “Nightmare” twice in the last seven months. I haven’t written a new word for any original stories in 2010.

In 2006, I was a lazy 18-year-old who would write “The High King, the Duchess, and the Secret” when I was supposed to be studying calc or microecon. Once I started writing, I couldn’t stop. I was often ten chapters ahead of posting on ff.net (which is, you know, insane).

In the summer of 2009, I was a recent college grad who hated her sales internship. So instead of cold calling, I finished the second half of “The Changing of the Constellations” in an inspired frenzy. In the fall of 2009, in lieu of applying for jobs (I only applied to two!), I started writing “Nightmare.” I was also spitting out a chapter a day for my original fic, which I managed to finish before I left the country on Christmas Day—130,000 words altogether.

But then January hit, and everything began to change, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. 

1. I started working full-time.
2. Mr. Bad Romance burst back into my life.

 Work. Suddenly my time was no longer mine. I was on a schedule, no longer staying up until 3:00am in the morning as the mood struck. The fast pace tired me, and though I had my evenings free, I was either too mentally exhausted to write, or too preoccupied with #2—Mr. Bad Romance.

 Details are interesting, but unimportant, regarding Mr. BR. Sufficed to say, having a wild/fluctuating/crazy love life does NOT help writing the way one would think. What’s the point of writing about love triangles if you’re living it? Sure, I’ve had experiences with amor before—“HKDS” didn’t come out of nowhere—but now that life is a full-fledged soap opera, I have no inclination to create more drama in my head.

 Okay. So. Here is where I try to piece together everything I’ve said above and try to fix myself. I know that: 

1. I enjoy writing only when I am NOT supposed to be writing. I know many other Neffers are the same way. When I was supposed to be a student, I was writing “HKDS”; when I was struggling with what I wanted to do with my life, I was writing about Talia’s identity crisis in “COTC.”
2. I write to escape, and when life is more interesting than fiction, I don’t write.
3. I need to learn to manage my time better. Working full-time is absolutely no excuse.

 What’s the bottom line? I don’t know. I’m sure as hell not quitting my job, and wising up and calming down my life would make things boring around here.

 What I do know is, I miss writing. At the very least, it’s a hobby. At best, it’s a future. So either way, I want to need to get back into it.

TBC…

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