I’ve been feeling stuck lately.
I finished a screenplay at the end of October, just in time to submit to several different contests. I told myself I’d finish another screenplay by Christmas, in time to pitch the concept to a potential investor. Problem is, the words aren’t flowing the way they need to. My self-imposed (and rather arbitrary) deadline is rapidly approaching. And all I feel is a profound sense of malaise.
I’m tired.
And sometimes, when you’re tired, you can’t help but tell the truth.
This has proven the perfect moment to return to the novel I’m writing.
About a year ago, I finished a first draft. I’ve spent the last nine months revisiting that draft. Revising. Carving. Shaping. I’ll work for a little while, then set it aside and work on a something else.
I don’t know that any piece of creative work I’ve ever made has been so painful. There are moments as I construct sentences when I want nothing more than to die. It hurts that much to pull this story out of me.
Some of this pain stems from judgment for what appears on the page. It’s wishing I could be more articulate, more poetic. It’s wishing I wasn’t saying all the things I’m saying.
I find myself judging my protagonist, a facsimile of so many things I used to be, but I’m not any longer. It’s painful to dig that deep, to look at who I used to be and offer that boy I worked so hard not to be any longer grace and acceptance and unconditional love.
It hurts to reach across time and summon who I was then and allow him to run his mouth, saying the kinds of things I probably wouldn’t say any longer.
It’s painful to let the truth spring out of me and continually wonder, “Is this too much?”
For now though, I choose to believe all this hurt I feel as I make words into sentences into scenes into stories means I’m doing something right.
joshua chamberlain 