Where’s the laughing gas?

I screwed up!

I had everything scheduled! There was a calendar! I did so much work!

But I still screwed up my outlining schedule.

I have been beefing up my outlining skills lately and decided to use the Story a Day May challenge to help. I succeeded and have thirty-one loose outlines. I decided to further challenge myself by making June a month to detail the outlines, and July a month to actually write the stories (which will line up nicely with the next bout of Camp NaNoWriMo). In order to prepare for June I wrote out a calendar that allowed the more simple stories to be outlined on weekends so that I could spend more time with my spouse, and on the first day of June I screwed it all up horribly.

How did I do it?

I was so excited about a particular outline I wanted to work on that I actually forgot all about the planning I had done, and went to work on that one first. This happened because I absolutely hate the outline and story that I was scheduled to work on.

A series of four bad point-of-view prompts in May left me so desperate to “make the prompt,” that I borrowed a fairy tale in order to make my goal for those four days. Imagine four days of outlining the same story you already know from different points of view. Imagine another four days to detail the outlines. Imagine another four days to write the stories. Even worse, imagine editing them later. *shudder*

Thinking about these stories made me so miserable that I would rather have been at the dentist; at least the dentist gives you laughing gas to ease the discomfort. It got so bad that I actually hated writing for the entire weekend. Can you believe that? Hated writing. Whenever I start to hate writing I know that I am doing something wrong. In this case I could easily identify it, so I pitched the stories and learned a valuable lesson I will never forget:

Only write for yourself.

I wrote those outlines because I was only trying to “make the prompt,” and therefore doomed myself to stories that I didn’t love because they weren’t my own. I actually allowed myself to be told what to do and as a writer that can be detrimental. We create so much more work and anguish for ourselves when we write anything less than what we want and what we love. Take it from me:

Just don’t do it.

This is water. Make good art.

-Dearwood Ellis

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