#and finish that one piece of work that has been languishing in purgatory for OVER A YEAR

[stalactites]

next year i'm gonna focus on drawing more original art, not just art that isn't based on media like my egg or animal drawings, but actual original concepts and characters and messages. it's not that i don't do that now i just haven't made it a priority and i want to change that.... gross creepy morbid drawings coming soon to an art blog near you

[lunamanar]

Just Say It

(I originally wrote this for my FictionPad blog, but was happy enough with it, I decided to post it other places.)

"If you have so much on your mind, why don't you say anything?"

"...I don't know."

"Is something stopping you?"

"No..."

"So what is it? What do you want to say?"

...If this sounds like tension between Squall and Rinoa, you already have some idea of why I write them. I probably have written something like this, in some story, although if so I can't recall which one. Maybe I've written it multiple times and it's easy to get mixed up, or maybe I just don't remember.

But the above isn't from a story. This is me, talking to myself, in the shower. In my head. In the car. All the time.

It's clear by the longform posts I've written in the past that I often do have a lot to say. I have a lot of thoughts, some better than others, but when I case my doubts aside, I do think I'm a fairly intelligent person with a unique perspective on a lot of things. I go genuinely believe that there is value in my words (although I'm sure there are also plenty of mistakes).

But so often, I just...don't say them. Or worse, I don't write them down. Ideas are born and die in my brain and the next morning I wake up, wondering, why didn't I just write it down? Why didn't I just tell them?

Part of me wants to say it's because I'm tired. I'm always tired. This is a true statement of fact with very few and brief exceptions. And sometimes, I really am too exhausted to find a computer or phone and jot down a few sentences to at least remind myself to address the ideas at a future time. But most of the time, I do have the energy to at least do that. But I don't. Or I start to, and the words don't come, and I give up without a fight. I lose so many opportunities because of it. Why, why, why do I do that?

I don't even know, not really. I love writing. If I can keep myself from walking away from it, if I just start typing and don't let myself stop, the energy to keep going just comes to me. I might not write what I thought I would at first, but I write something, and it's often better than what I thought I had to begin with.

Then I do this other curious and enraging thing. I save it as a draft and never look at it again. I stare at the finished product I've spent hours polishing and say, 'nah.' Close it all down. Then find I wish I'd said something when it was relevant. Or wish I'd worked on that story when it was fresh in my head.

"Do you really think you can do anything...if it's your job? You don't think you could defy orders?"

Now that is from a story, or a piece of one, I want to write. I want to explore the difference between self and livelihood; how some people can completely separate themselves from their work, and others have to be their work. And everything in between, the tension about the two. I want to articulate how I see that affecting Squall and Rinoa's relationship.

"Not all soldiers are bad people, but being a soldier makes you a bad person."

Another quote (not necessarily one I agree with; just a character's opinion, one that really pisses Zell off, might I add).

Related: things we do for our work we would never do among friends. Or ways in which that work can bleed into our personal lives, whether in good or bad ways. Because of years of phone support, I can approach and start a conversation with anyone, if I need to. I'm not afraid of initial interactions. I know that the vast majority of people are inclined to be pleasant and either cautious or friendly at first encounter, and I know how to address both and everything in-between.

(artwork by @skribleskrable)

But I also bring home a certain curt forwardness that sometimes vexes my friends and family. "Well, tell us what you really think!" is something I hear a lot. I don't lack tact--I can read a room--but I don't let people have illusions in my presence, either, and sometimes...well, sometimes, those illusions are important. I do it to myself, too. I don't let myself "hope for the best" or "have faith." Maybe I should, though. Maybe I need that, maybe I'm starved for it. Maybe my work, which has for years required predictive logic, 3-dimensional imagination (translate "the rack is stuck at the end of the storage table" into an understanding of the problem), and straightforward-but-gentle instruction...maybe it's bled away my ability to look forward to the future when all I can see are problems that have yet to be fixed.

I've been thinking about this for literally months and haven't written a word about it, despite needing to. It isn't for lack of want, either. Or ability. I can, I want to, I obviously have the energy to write this, so I should have the energy to write that...but I don't. I find distractions. I avoid. Just like I do with half the things that come to mind for me to say or write. But when I ask myself, what's stopping you? I draw a blank. I just can't start. I feel like the world is staring at me, and I turn away from it. It's as if I think the world is hanging on my every word and the pressure is too much, even though I know that isn't true. So what is it? Or more importantly, what can get me past it?

What got me to write this?

Another thing I'm prone to doing is...just stopping. For days. I did for this post, a few times. Then weeks, months, and years. On something, some story, some post that means a lot to me, too much to me, maybe. I never stop thinking about it. I never forget it's there. I just...don't finish, even though I know, more or less, what I want to say. It's like some wrench is literally stopping the cogs in my brain from processing the thoughts in a way that turns them into words.

Not because I don't have them, or even because the words are hard. I can find suitably words eloquent for a plethora of other subjects, so it's not like that particular part of my brain is broken. Just certain things. I don't know why. I don't know if it's something I can overcome--I want to--or if all the stories that are most important to me will languish forever in a wordless purgatory.

That's not an entirely inappropriate metaphor. One of the posts I've been meaning to finish but never have is about the way writing works for me. I've touched on it before, but have more to say about it: when I finish a story, I finish a piece of my characters' lives. I rarely, if ever, revisit it once I consider it done. For me, it's not "alive" anymore. It's in the past, a memory. And when it's all over, and I have nothing else to say? The characters, and their universe, usually die. The stories are their elegies. Or biographies, or in any case, archives of their existence and importance. To those characters, I am Father Time, and in finishing a piece, I bring those characters a step closer to The End.

I don't have a choice in it, mind, and I also don't need anyone to make me feel better about it, because it's not something that's upsetting to me. I exist, as a writer, both to bring characters to life and to close the book on those lives when the time comes. I've done that before and I'll keep doing it, I think; when the story is done, I feel it "leave" me, and if there's nothing after it, my desire to write for that story disappears. It's a deep sense of closure...and loss.

Maybe, for that reason, I'm scared of screwing up. It is true that I don't want to cheapen the meaning of the characters' lives by failing them in the text. I worry about that a lot. I don't want to forget, or miss anything. But I don't feel scared of that, exactly. I think I'm capable of doing these stories justice. So I'm not sure that's the problem. And my essays don't have such limitations, but the same stalling out happens with them. Like that post about creative life and death.

I don't have any answers. Just examples, and while there's a certain amount of catharsis in typing it out, at some point I'll start repeating myself, and I hate that. That's when it's time to stop, and I think now is that time.