Kassie N (dear-llama) - Writer's Page

Not sure what’s going on with me recently. Or — wait — maybe I do. I’m tired of my working hours. I’m tired of ending late. And I’m just… tired. 😐

I wish I could have more free time after work to do everything I want to. This is such an old refrain, I know, because it’s all I talk about month after month (year after year), but I guess it’s always relevant. I feel like I live only for the moments after work and on weekends. And I constantly feel guilty about not working more on my creative projects, but… I can’t! I try to do a little every day, but I think work is also sucking up so much of my time, energy, and soul that I don’t have any leftover after work to put into my own passion projects.

Maybe I need to give myself more time to recover in between projects. I’ve just finished the music box, and that was an enjoyable process, but now that I’m trying to get back into writing, I find that my mind has turned to mush. It’s almost as if I can’t write anymore. 😬

This was the same problem I had before I got all hyped up last November during NaNoWriMo. Maybe it’s because I’ve decided to scrap a whole 73k words from my second draft of Something Better. I don’t feel excited about it when I think of starting from scratch again — I feel tired. I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing in the past months that I spent writing — in fact, I feel like I’ve accomplished nothing since 2014, when I first wrote the first draft of this story (originally meant to be a novelette), now that I have to throw it all away.

I guess not all of it. But still. It feels like starting from scratch and I don’t feel motivated about it at all.

I know, logically, that it’s not starting from ground zero. It’s not square one. Because I already have these previous drafts (or draft-and-a-half) to draw on, even if I look back and feel like they’re crap now. 😅 But I guess sometimes the logical part of your brain doesn’t completely jive with the emotional part. You can know something is not true, but still feel as if it was. I’m at that point now. 🙃

I did, however, start writing a little for Chapter 16 of Auld Lang Syne this morning on the commute. I haven’t opened Scrivener in the longest time, but I’ve started two new documents on Google Docs — the way I used to write before I discovered Scrivener. I mean, Scrivener still helps me stay organised with all my character sheets etc, but somehow I’ve recently been shying away from starting it up, maybe because it feels like such a Huge Endeavour when I sit down to write with it. 👀 Maybe what I need now is a casual, less inertia-inducing way of writing. And I used to write on my phone on Google Docs all the time — it was how I finished most of my stories. Somewhere Else, the sequel to Something Better, for one. I wrote it all on my phone on Google Docs. 😂

And maybe that’s just what I need right now. Just writing casually, for fun, putting words on a paper — and not putting too much stress on myself, feeling like I’ve wasted all these years when I could have been working on fixing up my drafts and editing and trying to get published. I keep feeling like I should have published Something Better already. I should have done something with my writing already. Should have, could have…

Ugh.

Or maybe what I need is some time away from Something Better, instead of trying to force it down my own throat day after day and feeling stuck, as if I won’t be able to write anything else anymore. 😐 Since I’ve started writing again back in 2019, I haven’t actually written anything new at all. I’ve come back to finish Somewhere Else, which took over a year, after which I jumped straight back into picking up Auld Lang Syne again… And then back to editing and re-writing Something Better now. But, other than brainstorming a little for my Untitled Dragon Project and jotting down a loose scene or two, I haven’t written anything completely new at all.

Maybe I need to do that. Starting up the Untitled Dragon Project was supposed to be that ‘something new’ for me, but I keep feeling like I need to be working on my ‘proper projects’ like Something Better and Auld Lang Syne. But maybe what I should do right now is start on something completely new that doesn’t stress me out with all the preconceived notions I’ve had of it, and let my creativity slowly creak back to life again…