You know what i'm talking about here. You're writing your very first book and you've been on this creative roll and things are flowing and you've been writing chapter after chapter and everything feels great and wonderful and you think you can do no wrong. Your book is going to be a #1 Bestseller and you can picture your name up in lights, your book proudly displayed at the entrance to the book store, the Manager's top pick no less. Your book appears on Amazon at the top of any search for anything. Your book everywhere and there you are at the Bank or the checkout line and strangers are coming up to you with "I thought I recognized you" as they pull out your book with your picture on the back cover and ask you to sign it. You can't wait for Sunday, to check the Sunday paper book review expecting that glowing review, the one that hits you and your book that home run.
You go on a diet to lose weight because you want to look good when you go on the book promo circuit, maybe even TV to plug it with the hopes that some director is watching and see's your book as a script and voila! Your book is now a movie. You'll even accept a CBC movie because you know it's a stepping stone to that Hallmark movie and then from there it's only a matter of time to the big time, the Show. Hollywood and all it's wonderfully decadent trappings. It's only a matter of time as you have convinced yourself it will be so.
You start imagining what you will be like on the set and you giving the actors direction and everything based on how you see them in YOUR BOOK. You start shopping for new Movie Set/TV clothes, the ones that will fit AFTER you lose the 10 pounds you gained recently due to all this wonderful magical writing. Where you spent 13 hours straight on 4 consecutive days, living off pop, chips, cookies and pizza, at your computer writing, afraid to move or get up as if the creative spark will vanish into thin air. You stretch out the bathroom breaks and at one point actually consider using one of the empty pop bottles to pee on the fly.
Every word you write literally jumps off at the page at your psyche. Sentences and paragraphs flow like melted butter into one another creating this wonderful storyline and you think "Man i'm good!" "This is great!" And I didn't think it would be this easy but it is. Wow! Never mind this book i've got the next 2 or 3 already. As you peck furiously away you start thinking Trilogy and how that equates to $. Many $$$ actually.
So you start throwing caution to the wind and your writing now starts to stretch outside the lines just a bit. At first you don't notice because you think you are fluid and writing with flair. The lines are starting to blur a little more with each word, sentence, paragraph but at some point you had put your glasses down, maybe when you scarfing that 2 day old pizza slice, and when you went to put them back on you grabbed the wrong pair instead.
You grabbed the Rose coloured ones and not noticing the difference you peck merrily away but the now the lines are stretched and blurry and your creativity, which was legit, is now mostly outside the lines. Sort of like when you are driving late at night and you are very tired and you have white line fever. But instead you have writing line fever and you don't notice until it's way past too late and you've fallen asleep at the wheel, and in your case the keyboard. You careen out of control crashing and burning and then waking up walking around in a daze and inspecting the wreckage you realize this is SHIT! for the most part and back to the storyboard you go.
This time a little more humbler, a little more wiser, the bruises aka your ego, a reminder to keep things simple, take those breaks even when you don't want to. Step away from that keyboard even just for a bit. Go strum your guitar or shoot some Little Tykes hoops in your living room. Do anything. Just take that break. Arrive in one piece. Just like those truckers do.
Comentarios