6.13.14 - On Being Creatively Satisfied

The Winter of our Discontent

I've been wanting to write a long form piece on creative satisfaction, but since I haven't gotten around to it, I'll delve in here briefly. An interviewer asked Merlin Mann if he was creatively satisfied. I loved the question, and asked it of myself. The answer was a resounding no, for all the reasons I spoke about yesterday.

With deadlines and multiple series and rushing all the time, I still don't feel like I've hit my stride, found the perfect character, the right story. I have too many books I want to write. And time, she is a ticking, you know? My creative biological clock has been on fire recently. I feel oddly like time is running out. I've hit middle age (not sure how the hell THAT happened) and while I feel twenty-seven, reality is, I'm not. I won't be able to do this forever. And the amount of story in my head that needs to come out, well, everyone tells me I need to slow down, but if I do, I won't get them all down.

It's that lost eight years, when I quit writing entirely because of my boob of a teacher, coming back to haunt me. I've written fourteen novels in eleven years (ten in the past eight). So say I'd written a book a year during that lost time, and a book a year since, then I'd be at twenty-one now.

So I guess I'm only seven behind. Well. That changes things. By the end of 2016 or early 2017, I should be caught up to where I should be. 

A relaxing thought.

Silly, huh?

200 words only today, but edited a large chuck and sent off the first 100 pages to my editor. Working this weekend, I'll make up for it, I'm sure.