Struggling to Write

 My brain is either too tired or too wired to write

Via Public Domain Pictures

Since I was ten years old, I have been writing stories and dreamed of being published. Many novelists have the same dream from a young age, so I am one of many. It is about finishing a work, yet I struggle to finish.

Today I am tired after substituting a kindergarten class, taking my son to the clinic, and making dinner. I want to write fiction, but that doesn’t come as easily to me. I have trained myself to write a blog post over the last six years. It is harder to get back into writing fiction seriously.

I have been too tired for sixteen years since leaving on my Latter-day Saint mission. During the mission, I only wrote letters. After I came home early, I reordered my life to cope with my new diagnosis of bipolar 2. I worked two jobs until marriage. Then I worked more, attended college, fell asleep after work, and had children. I felt tired for 9 years. After my third son, I managed to have some energy to blog and ghostwrite two novellas. Then I felt too tired during my fourth pregnancy. About two years later, I felt I could blog again. In the meantime, I wrote several chapters in several books. I made minute progress and then I lost interest.

Having bipolar 2, my brain is also wired at times. I have many shiny new ideas for novels (and blog posts) that I never finish. I start some novels but struggle to go beyond a week or month. I become bored with the project. In high school and college, I managed to write “novels” of 20,000 words. They were rough drafts that became second drafts. I sent these to publishers with no bites. I understand why I had no bites now. They were not detailed enough. As my creative writing teacher at BYU stated, the novels lacked immediacy. I had mostly dialogue, but no details to ground the reader in the setting or action.

The novels I wrote needed reworking and the plots have changed over time. I have my list of plot ideas for the novellas I wrote in high school and college. Many ideas will fall by the wayside. That’s the nature of the beast.

Currently, I have ideas for a humanoid species who have different powers, such as mind-reading, object-reading, lip-reading, mind control, and empath powers. They are in a hierarchy of who rules over another species. This idea came from the BLM riots. History could be rewritten according to the prejudices and enslaving different “readers.” So far, I have written the creation stories of the mind-readers and lip-readers.

In order to finish many of my partial drafts, I need to reacquaint myself with the characters, settings, and plots. That can take several days or weeks that I just don’t want to “waste” during the hour or so I have time each day. I also find that I want to write about issues currently troubling me. I need to itch that scratch, per se.

What I can finish easily are poems. When my mind catches onto an idea, I can usually write a poem within days. Albeit, they may be excellent poems or mediocre poems. I may rework them later. I know others who struggle writing poetry yet can write fiction quickly. I have that momentary excitement and hyperfocus that can channel writing poetry. Not so much with novels.

Editing is another aspect of my writing. I can catch some errors quickly, while others are not so obvious. Some words I misspell almost every time: piece, niece, opportunity, and so on. Yet I can spell most words with great ease. Grammarly has been very helpful with the self-editing process.

I wondered if I still had my editing prowess since I haven’t been a tutor for 17 years. Recently, a relative and friend asked me to proofread their writing. My skills came back. I recognized error patterns that I could point out and revising for a specific audience. My friend said I retained her writing style, which makes me very pleased. That is the goal of editing: to retain the writer’s style through editorial changes.

Now here I am writing another blog post about writing instead of writing fiction. I can manage some blog posts within 2–4 hours, which is why I usually devote my time to blog posts.

One day I will write fiction with ease again. When my children are older. When my youngest leaves the house. When I finish vacationing during retirement. Okay, maybe that time will never come unless I change my habits.

C’est la vie.