I fully admit that I am a superstitious/neurotic writer, and it’s annoying to everybody, especially me. I follow silly rules that have no logical basis with the belief that somehow adhering to these guidelines will guarantee success.
Such as; I can’t reuse a character’s first name, I can’t work on fiction until I journal first, and the big one, don’t talk about details of a story until it’s finished, because if I were, then the story will never get finished. The last rule has been tricky when it comes to this blog, which leaves some of my posts so vague that they are incomprehensible.
Last night, I broke the no talking rule with my wife. (Yes, I don’t even tell my wife about my work until it’s done.) And it needed to happen.
The context here is that I have been working, on and off, for about a year, on a story based upon a person I used to work with, and who my wife also knows. I have told no one about this story, obviously, and this co-worker came up in conversation last night. As in, “Whatever happened to what’s their name?” We talked about the possible fate of this person, and why they were such a challenge to work with.
And that’s when I was like, I should share this idea, and why I am curious to attempt to write a story about them. Also, I wanted feedback if it was a good idea.
The jury is still out, as the wife pointed out everything that I knew was problematic about the story… so it needs still more work if it is ever to see the light of day.
The bigger point here is that I still have several self imposed barriers that I need to break through. The “talking” rule is bullshit as what really does is try to protect me from any criticism. If I never share, then I can never be wrong.
I still got a long way to go, but working on it.
