Rational and Sustainable

“He glared fearsomely at the outer gloom, and thought of the grisly tales he had heard of Tsotha’s necromantic cruelty, and it was with an icy sensation down his spine that he realized that these must be the very Halls of Horror named in shuddering lengendry, the tunnels and dungeons wherein Tsotha performed horrible experiments with beings human, bestial, and, it was whispered, demoniac, tampering blasphemously with the naked basic elements of life itself.”
— (Excerpt from The Scarlet Citadel, by Robert E. Howard)


Rational and Sustainable
Well, here we are, three weeks into it; a quarter of the way through the second round of ROW80.  It’s been an interesting journey so far.  In the first couple of weeks I was able to get by on my unbridled enthusiasm alone, but going into the third week, it took more willpower, my momentum slowed and my progress faltered a bit as I had to bear-down and slog-through some typical resistance.  My creative-wells were starting to run dry and I was starting to feel the exhaustion of writing every day.  This is mostly due to the daily burden of getting my daily word-count in for Camp NaNoWriMo.  As you can see from my Camper Profile, I was hitting my daily goals there for the first couple of weeks, but started to fall behind a week ago.  Funny how one missed day there can mess up your momentum.  As I have stated previously, I keep slogging along with my “stream-of-consciousness” exercises and “word sprints”, but I don’t feel like I’m crafting as much story there as I do when I work on my ROW80 projects.  Even though I enjoy the support of my cabin-mates, I feel that Camp NaNoWriMo has been a distraction from my main goal of story-crafting.  I feel like I’m always behind there, aimlessly racing the clock to get my words in, when I could be outlining or researching my story, and would rather be working at a more leisurely pace.  That’s just me.  That’s the way my creativity works.  I prefer the pace of ROW80, which, for me, is far more rational and sustainable over the long-run.  Story-crafting is a marathon, not a series of sprints.  If I need to stop and work out a few story issues on paper, ROW80 allows me to schedule my time for that, whereas for the NaNo-challenges, it’s all about the word-count.  I’ll try to finish what I started at Camp NaNo, but ROW80 is my priority and focus from here forward.

I’m a visual artist and have been doing a lot of character sketches lately, loosely scribbling-out their basic shapes as I try to get a feel of what they might look like.  I’ve been drawing all my life, and I naturally gravitate towards pencil and paper when I want to get inspired.  Drawing ignites my imagination and evokes my Muse.  And more importantly, it replenishes my creative-wells, which, as I’ve said, have been depleted lately.  Seeing my favorite characters on paper helps me identify with them and I start to see their attitudes and personalities come through.  Drawing also helps me establish my fantasy-world setting, placing my characters in crumbling ruins or mystical forests helps me visualize my story better.  To me, drawing makes my story-world “real”.  If you measure the progress of last week by creativity alone, I’d say that I had a pretty productive week.  If you measure the progress by writing-goal achievements, then I’d say I my week was unproductive.  I tend to obsess and fixate on one aspect of my creativity at a time, to the exclusion of everything else.  I’m still trying to find a balance.  So, it's time to pin my drawing to my cork-board and get back to the keyboard.  Writers write, right?

That’s all for now.  Keep the Fire Burning!
Please visit the other writers in the ROW80 Community…