There are people who have to fight to succeed because of their detractors. Haters gonna hate, right? Well, I don't have enemies - or none that I know of. I keep a pretty tight circle of friends.
For all my goals and dreams, my biggest weaknesses come from right inside myself. Or my
self.
Being a Cancer is bad enough. I have this damn shell of mine that I retreat into too often for my own good. When I do poke out my head, I am just waiting to get my feelings hurt. Then, when I
do take a chance and
don't get hurt, I still wait for it. That's not just with relationships, but with writing, working, sharing a confidence... or just walking through the damn grocery store.
There's a lot of good in the Cancer that is me. I am maternal, domestic and I love to nurture others.
And I am resolute, strong-willed, ambitious, careful, patient, stubborn.
That's the good stuff. There's plenty of... not-so-good-stuff in there.
As a writer, I am sometimes too lost in a story to tell it. I will dissect and analyze my characters until I feel too protective of them to share their stories. That's
if I get to the writing phase of the project. I sometimes think that I get my satisfaction out of creating worlds - not sharing them. Here is how my process usually works:
- I hear pieces of a story in my head. (Or I just stop ignoring them.) These pieces are collected from my "real" world of life, memories or wishes.
- Naming my characters and locations. Because what's out there is never right enough for me.
- Once I name characters, I have to bring them out of my head and onto paper. Not "onto paper" as in telling their story. Much too early for that. First, I have to get down the details of their facial expressions, how they smell, and, possibly, what their "favorites" are. It's like I have a Teen Beat fact-sheet going. Then I do their family/friend/acquaintance trees. (You think I'm kidding? Dead serious.)
- Locations are especially tricky since I require a map and I draw like a preschooler using their non-dominant hand. (I went through a 40-sheet spiral with the last location before I got it right.)
- Now I have to pull together all the different notes (made on paper, on at least 5 different android apps, and out of my head) that contain bits and pieces of dialogue. Dialogue comes to me at all times of the day and night. I have woken up from the nth stage of sleep and written notes on my $20 special-ordered birth certificate.)
- It's impossible to effectively organize all my notes so I build an ugly wall of them opposite my computer. And I mean a literal (okay, sort of literal) wall: a tape-tacked construct of papers that flutter with every rotation of my room fan. If looking at this ugliness depresses me at any time it's in use, I carefully pull it down and temporarily store it under the bed.
- When I actually start writing, I am too critical of my efforts. I write and backspace-delete until, after hours and days and weeks of labor, I might have two chapters. Of course, those chapters are stored into five or six different folders on my computer. There's a folder for the version I hate, but keep because it has the most completed words, the one for a version I love but still needs so much work - and then there are the other versions that I kept for reasons I can't remember but am afraid to delete.
I wish I had a Number 8 to add to this list. It would be the part where I finish at least a rough draft of something - anything. Sadly, I've only reached that point three times in my life. It was a trilogy. A coming-of-age love story. Very raw and honest. I got hurt by the person who inspired me so I did something that horrifies me to even think about: I deleted every digital copy, stored backup copy and even the paper printout. It's just gone.
I am currently working on a story. If I can control my inner self and yet let it free, I might have something to publish by the end of my life. Whenever that may be.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou
