A Milestone and a Manifesto.

[sorcyress]

100k.

I have, since I started 750words.com, written 100,000 words. More --101,729 says their official score. And I have completed 103 days.

Holy shit.

That...holy _shit_. It's such a big number, and the whole reason it freaks me out is because it is --that is a six digit number! Nothing I have ever written has come close to six digits.

But, and this is an important but, let's be honest here.

Nothing I have ever written has been consistently worked on for four straight months. Nothing I have ever *done* has been consistently worked on for four straight months. Ever. This is a totally foreign feeling, the fact that not only have I come up with this thing to do, and done it, but that I have _kept_ coming back and _kept_ doing it, day after day after day.

The fact that I have missed twenty days, and had incompletes on another two. That's twenty two days where I didn't make it, and after every single one of those, I swore and gritted my teeth.

And I wrote.

***

This is freaking me out.

This is freaking me out because my insecurities don't know how to act what to say what they're doing because for the first time in my life, I actually believe that maybe I can do what I dream of.

And that's not true. I can't let that be true, because I don't have that faith in myself, and I will calmly remind myself that a lot of it was journaling, a lot of it was whining, a lot of it was emo bullshit and swearing at people because I finally had a place for that again.

(750w? I do officially knight you BtW v.3.0. Congratulations)

But a lot of that journaling could become essays. Even I get bored with just the renditions of what I did and what I ate. I write interesting things too. I write private things and secret things and weird things and daydreams --for the first time in my life, I have ever had a space to write daydreams, can you imagine?

And my livejournaling has gone down, and that's because all those good thoughts have gone somewhere else, and that's bad. But I have the first step. I am writing, every single day. And that's the easy part.

The hard part is publishing. The hard part is giving my words to other people to read, and that has always been the hard part, even when my coward's heart has taken it as the easier route than actually saying the damn things.

And the hard part is writing things worth publishing. I have proven that I CAN write every day, can do what every writer in every interview has said, can get those words onto paper. I just now have to prove that I can keep myself consistent. That I can develop characters. That I can take people who are comfortable where they are and make them uncomfortable and bring them back to comfort once more.

I have proven I can write. The next step is to prove I can be a writer.

***

And dear gods, I'm so scared. It is a comfortable dream, bittersweet with the idea that it will never come true, I know that, I *revel* in that fact.

I am never going to be a published author. Ever. That name of mine (for the Sorcyress has many many names, and you lot only know a few of mine) that I will give to my books, that name is never going to be a reality.

And I know this. I am dead certain of this fact, because I am lazy and shiftless and distractible and I lack the focus and the motivation to make my dreams come true and I have come to terms with that fact.

And yet I keep trying. And I keep trying, and I keep trying, and I have found something that might actually make it possible, and gods help me, I don't know how to cope with the idea that I might not fail.

(Is that crazy? It must be. But I'm sitting here sobbing on a balcony in the middle of a personal hell, and so crazy or not, the idea has power over me.)

***

Maybe I'm just scared because I know I am only setting myself up for another disappointment.

Maybe I'm just scared because I do know this will never come true, so the more I hope, the closer I get, the more it's going to hurt when I crash down again.

Maybe I'm just scared because I'm clever, maybe I'm just scared because I'm too practical, too logical, too smart, too damn rational to ever think that the one in a million chance it takes to become read would ever happen to me.

(And maybe I'm scared because I am my father's daughter, and because he never made it. A man who has otherwise done so much, dragged himself through college and med school and residency and the goddamn Navy, suffered through three moves now, and three children, and twenty three years of marriage, a man who has clawed his way to the top of his field, who has lost more motivation than I will ever have in my lifetime...he has not reached his dream. He has never written that sci-fi novel that he wants to have published.

And if he can't do it, what in Gods' great Hell makes me think I can?)

***

There are precious few parts of my life that the insecurity beasts are not allowed to touch.

They are not allowed to touch my grand and glorious gaping wound, that which I've spent much of the last year actively trying to stitch back up so I can pretend to be whole.

And they are not allowed to let people I love use other humans against me. (See also "I will not be afraid of women").

And that's it.

This? My great and glorious dream and deepest desire, the thing I want like I want air, the thing that keeps me stable and keeps me sane even when my brain threatens to tear itself apart, the very identity I think of first when asked to define who I am...Fair game.

And that's fucked up and I'm gonna have to try and fix it. I'm sure as hell not sure I'm gonna make it, or how, but I'm gonna try and fix it.

Because some things are worth fighting your inner demons for.

~Sor
MOOP!

Comments

[gyrik-22.livejournal.com]

You can borrow some of my faith in you, I have plenty to spare.

*hugs and smiles*

[distant-flicker.livejournal.com]

It is a comfortable dream, bittersweet with the idea that it will never come true, I know that, I *revel* in that fact.

I don't know what it is. It IS comfortable. It's this sort of gleeful, self-effacing nihilism. I don't think of it as giving up, but as of acknowledging the odds.

But I think that same nihilism makes the successes all the more surprising and sweeter.

[gravitrue.livejournal.com]

Your dad achieved some other important dreams. If you prioritize writing over, say, med school, you stand a better chance of success...

[underwatercolor.livejournal.com]

*hugs* :)

[merseine0613.livejournal.com]

Friends are people who can babysit your dreams for you until you're ready to pick them up again. We can believe in you, hold our faith in you absolutely inviolate, and know that you are great, even though you don't believe it yourself yet.

Don't worry - we know we're right and we'll wait patiently until you change your mind and come around to reality. Until then, our faith in you won't change.

*hugs!*

[zombie-dog.livejournal.com]

First of all: Congratulations. I'm a little baffled by your staunch refusal to accept the distinct possibility of your own success, but that you have done this is awesome.

If what it takes to get you to do well is for you to believe that you can't possibly do well, I suppose we'll have to take it.

Also: that 750words thing is really neat. I think I might have to join it.

[moniquill.livejournal.com]

I have not known you long, and I do not know you well at all, but I believe that you can be a published author.

I am.

Take it in small steps.

It's not as daunting as they want you to think it is.

[harena.livejournal.com]

*makes emphatically positive remarks in regards to my fondness of your writing*

*has enjoyed everything of yours that i've read*

*also feels you are Quite Capable of being a Published Writer*

*is trapped forever in the third person ohnoes*

*huggles muchly!* ♥♥♥

[ginevra007.livejournal.com]

Well your dad still might do that novel if and when he retires. He is not someone who,(at least from looking at it from where I sit) can be idle for long.

Perhaps what you need is a writing group. Folks to help you push yourself when you might not want to do it your self. Or a nag, like me, to read your stuff and remind you how good you are, and how much better you can be and by the way get back to work. *grin*

I know you can do this.

[tolkienkookad.livejournal.com]

I don't think Dad's novel was perceived in the same way as me. I saw him as a, "Hey, I wrote a novel once and it was pretty bad." Sure, he was wistful, but sometimes you're wistful about things that didn't happen that could have changed your life -- and you don't look back or regret anyway.

Dreams change. People change. He's living his dream now.

The important thing is for you to start living yours.

[nurrynur.livejournal.com]

I read this.