Recently, I made an Instagram post comparing my writing from 2019/2020, to 2022 to serve as encouragement, to show how I’ve gotten better, but it ended up making me melancholy. Objectively, I got better: my descriptions are more vivid, my dialogue has nuance, and my characters are deeper, yet something is missing. I improved, but at what cost?
My main project from 2019/2020 was titled Princiepoo Goes On an Adventure, and I had a notebook full of character art and planning I took with me everywhere. I blabbered on about it incessantly. Enamored with a world full of dragons, sand, and making fun of the fantasy plot of “Chosen One goes on an adventure to get McGuffin” that was all upside down. Talking about it now, after two years of letting the project collect dust, I’m getting excited. There was this element of puerile insanity; throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck, no outline, no real plot, just my characters and the world that solidified under their feet. I was so excited to see where my bumpkins would lead me whenever I sat down to write.
But now? God, everything is different now. Whenever I sit down to write I’m paralyzed with I need to make the dialogue flow better, need to make this work, need to make this look and read well so it’s easier to edit later. What is the character’s primary flaw? How is that impacting the scene? Question after question after question. I have a short story released, so I need to live up to that; be better than that.
Between the two works, my passion for character remained consistent. I still blabber on about Montoya and Rose (2022 Project) as I did with Zain and Tau. It was Princiepoo that got me addicted to the foil pairing of straight man and jester, which is evident in The Misadventures of Montoya and Rose. But the passion is different. Now with TMOMAR, everything is set up for a goal, everything has to be checked through my knowledge of “good” writing. It’s like pulling teeth.
When I try to turn off Writer Brain™, and have fun with a scene, it inevitably switches back on and squats down. I reread what I wrote over and over, looking for ways to tighten up the prose. Back in 2019/2020, I didn’t care if it was good. Yes, I wanted to improve, but I knew that a project titled Prinicepoo Goes On an Adventure, wasn’t going to be the crème de la crème, so, anything worked. I was so free with my writing.
I am my own issue. As I improved, learned more about the craft of writing, dabbled in teaching writing, thus creating standards for myself. It’s not good enough to simply have fun with something, it has to work. And in a slightly depressing, capitalistic way, I have to make it good so it can make money. It’s the mindset of if I do it right the first time, I can get it out sooner, set up my career early, and earn a coin.
That’s fucked.
These past few weeks I’ve felt so down on my work, nitpicking it, and borderline insulting it because it isn’t “good”. I can’t get the words to flow because I’m so anal-retentive about the words I am putting down being “good”. It has been a year since I started writing TMOMAR, and it has lost some of its luster; my ideas aren’t fresh and shiny anymore, they just need to be implemented. Some of this feeling can be attributed to the fact I’m on a second draft, a complete rewrite of the book, and with Princiepoo it was the first draft (though, I did get about 21k words deep).
And I had to address the fact that I stopped working on Princiepoo. Why? I was moving on. I wanted to work on a more complex, more difficult thriller idea, that was gritty, and “cool”. Something challenging. The cutesy little adventure story wasn’t cutting it for me anymore, and I was losing interest. I wrote myself into corners, and I started needed to pull off the things I was setting up.
Good job, kid. You grew up. Now what?
Now I need to go back and start working on things for myself, with no need of thinking about it getting published, worrying about it being good. Just cut some of the angst out of it and enjoy what’s left of my childhood. It’s important to strike a balance between taking a project seriously and having a dinky little side piece that serves no other purpose than to make me happy—that’s why I started writing in the first place.
“You’ve taught me how to bring happiness into my life, how to smile and see hope when all seems lost, you’ve guided me through the hardest trials. You’ve given me so, so much, and I can only hope that I’ve done the same for you.” Absolutely not, darling. How have we grown together? What the hell is she doing? None of this makes any fucking sense.
Princiepoo Goes On an Adventure
J. V. Montague 