Battling My Inner Writer

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:

1. 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.
2. Naming my characters and locations. Because what's out there is never right enough for me. 
3. 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.)
4. 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.)
5. 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.)
6. 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.
7. 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