Well, I thought that I would have a setback yesterday because I had myself a little pity party when I found out that my bank accounts were overdrawn. I think too much emphasis is placed on “being good” and keeping a healthy bank account. Don’t get me wrong, I want to ensure that my bank account is used responsibly, of course, but I mean it’s gotten to the point that one mistake that happens to everyone can nearly destroy me and question my moral integrity, my intelligence, my overall ability to do anything good and right in this world. I mean, I can talk about it in a distant way, but good grief, did I slump REALLY low yesterday. To the point where I was crippled, my mind numb, and questioning how I could ever aspire to be a professional, fulltime writer when I couldn’t even support myself with a regular full time job, and I would have to be a really great writer like those celebrity writers, not the ones who pound away at the computer and despite showing up and paying homage to the muse, they are still overlooked and unrecognized and unpaid, but what does that matter because they’re doing what they love, and it’s not about the money anyway, is it? Well, even though I agree with that wholeheartedly, that it’s not about the money, and that I enjoy writing as a hobby, realistically speaking, I will need money eventually if I am to be able to follow through on my plan for being this “professional writer”, and considering that yesterday I felt so stupid, why should I even bother because I won’t ever be a celebrity writer, not that I want the celebrity-recognition but I would like the paycheck or fraction of the paycheck as that status can command, and being that status is what I need to do this fulltime, so why even bother at all since I’m not good enough to even be thinking about that level of income. The whole morning went on and on like that in the midst of looking for other jobs that I can take on part-time, because at least I was “doing something.” It was a never-ending dizzying circle that kept spiraling down in this odd samsaric kind of way.
Thankfully, during my pre-ordained break, (after I punched out a paragraph-cum-poem neatly entitle “sucking at life”) I checked out facebook, and after a few encouraging words from my cousin Richelle, I was ready to get over myself and write again. Sure, it wasn’t all that easy, since I was on the technical plotting stage since I reached a point in my scene writing that I didn’t know where I was to get anywhere, but I ended up forcing myself to write till 10pm writing a fully developed plot summary (I hate the term outline, it’s too structured and yet also too sparse) that I can use to refer to and flesh out since I basically wrote them as self-encapsulating scene/paragraphs that still needs descriptions, dialogue, etc. But at least this way, I was able to see in miniature the novel develop scene per scene and if at the end of the scene, I knew more about the characters and if there were changes as compared to the beginning of that scene. There were few areas where I thought it may have dragged, which is good seeing it in miniature so I didn’t have to waste hours on writing that scene fully, only to discover that I needed to fill it in with a foreshadowing or another character, or whatever. Plus, seeing this thing to the end, and forcing myself to write with a specific time challenge I was able to create transitions and scenarios that flowed one to the other without thinking about it because I was just trying to see to the end. Kind of like skimming a novel to skip to the end and see what will happen. Except with writing. It was a weird feeling, but I didn’t have time to think about it because I was too busy writing. It makes sense to me.
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