This past week, I finished chapter 10 in Codename: Memories. I’m close to the end, only three planned chapters to go. But there’s a demon lurking in the shadows, threatening to ruin everything.
It’s a New Idea.
The appeal of a New Idea is very hard to resist. I’ve been working on Memories for ten months now, but inconsistently. I’ll go through periods when I write a little bit every day and knock out a chapter a week. Sometimes, I write in more concentrated bursts and I’ll knock out a chapter every couple days. But then I go through long stretches of not writing at all. It’s less like block and more like resting.
I’ve needed to pace myself because I’m getting back into writing shape. And just like I was training this summer to do my first multi-day bike ride, I feel like creative muscles can and should be trained and developed properly to avoid burnout.
Pacing has a darker side, unfortunately, which is losing momentum. I came up with the idea of Memories in a rush on January 31 of this year, wrote all my notes in a day and wrote the first chapter the following day. Because getting a New Idea is such a rush. The possibilities are exciting and endless. It’s new and a total dopamine trip. But, in order to write a novel, you need to be able to persevere past that dopamine rush. For me, I also need to ignore my stupid inner critic who’s trying to sabotage me.
But, oh boy! I’ve got a New Idea.
It’s actually an Old Idea. But it’s one that never got off the ground. Because sometimes ideas are like that. I probably still have the first chapter that I wrote over ten years ago knocking around on a hard drive. But I’m probably not going to look for it. I want to start fresh.
In the meantime, though, I want to finish Memories before I work on anything else.
More than that, I need to finish it.
If I abandon it now, even temporarily, to work on something like, I feel like there’s going to be that voice in the back of my mind (another version of my inner critic) that’s going to say that I can’t finish anything anymore, so why even start. That’s not going to happen.
Not this time.
This evening, I bought a new journal for my New Idea. I also bought a cover to bind Memories when I finish it, for the editing process. And I’m excited about both things.
The Chimerical Dark 