Well, That Was Embarrassing
Writing, Work, and the Relentless Drive to Create
For the last six weeks, my focus has been pretty much consumed by a project for work. This is not new, nor is it surprising—anyone who knows me knows that I am most at peace with myself when I am knee-deep in a project, whether it’s writing or work or watercolors (or coding or crafting or cleaning). I even have a name for people like me: Project People. Many of the writers I know are Project People. A few years ago, I started asking why that was—and, perhaps more importantly, if all writers were like this. I don’t have an answer to that last part, but I definitely have some insights to share from years of observation.
When I was young, I didn’t have a strong sense of What I Wanted to Be When I Grew Up—a lot of things sounded interesting to me, but I ultimately settled on writing because I was good at it. However, there was one aspiration that was a little more salient: for a time, I wanted to be a professional video editor. I was about eleven when I taught myself Photoshop, with FinalCut following shortly thereafter (my dad worked in commercial video production, so I had access to all the best software, on the best machines, which he brought home from the office).
This matters because it relates to the project I was working on, which I turned in on Monday. You see, I now edit video for my job. I create trainings, working in the same software ecosystem I learned as a child (actually, I only learned Premiere once they changed everything to be exactly like FCP). The strange thing is that I am the only person in my department with professional graphics and production experience; everyone else comes from the field in which we are training.
So while I am living my dream, I am doing it in a context where my skills are not always relevant—I have actually spent the last two years sitting back and learning everything I could about a field I was only vaguely aware of before I started this job. In the context of my work, I had very little expertise—and for a chronic overachiever desperate to prove herself, there is nothing more frustrating than having to sit in a corner and feel like an absolute neophyte, needing to consult other people for every project.
This project was the first one I’ve worked on as an insider, understanding both the material I was presenting and the context in which it would be used. I poured two years of the need to prove myself into it. And, while the result was good, it took up far more of my attention than it required.
An Untenable Situation
I covered a lot of this in my post about writer’s block, so I will try very hard not to repeat myself—but the last couple weeks of this project have manifested the exact phenomena I described in that post. There were several days where I would set aside twelve or more hours to work, then stare at my computer for eight of those hours, letting the fear absolutely take me. I couldn’t bring myself to pivot and work on something else—to get anything else done, and return to this project once I had generated some momentum. I could only think about this project.
Writing my various books was the same, as I have already described. And, in recent years, I have made some progress in understanding where this mania comes from. What I am less certain about is how to break the cycle.
I make no secret of the fact that I have trauma—anyone who reads my books will know that, as I have unintentionally made trauma the central arc for my main character. I will not go into more specifics here, because that is not the subject of this blog, but it is something I am conscious of in many aspects of my life. The obsession to prove myself on a single project is a mere synecdoche for the need to feel secure, combined with malformed internal mechanisms for self-validation. I need that gold star, that A+ grade—that affirmation that I have contributed something valuable. It is existential for me…and the anxiety is existential, as well.
Most of the other writers I know have trauma. Most of them work long, obsessive hours for their own gold stars, their own external affirmations. The histories vary, but the drive is the same: for the Project People, the projects are more than a distraction—they are a way to get that validation. When I meet the writer who writes only for themselves, I will have many questions, since they will undermine the correlation. But I haven’t met that writer yet.
Fear Will Find You
Video editing is the closest thing I can think of (in real life) to magic12: I can take a static image of a website, tell it to move upward within the visual space of a browser window, and it looks like I’m scrolling on a website. Watching this process come together fills me with wonder, every time.
But there’s a catch. As in a story, the elements I have constructed are interconnected—if I make an edit, it can shift something else that was already perfect, so that needs to then be brought back into alignment. I have always known this: when I was a kid, I used to say you could spend an hour editing ten seconds of video. If that sounds a bit perfectionist…yeah! It’s also tedious, frustrating, terrifying, and nerve-wracking. But the wonder makes it worth it.
I have known this fear since I was young, but working on this project brought it into sharper focus. The paralyzing anxiety that I described above really only struck me in the last two weeks, during the revision stage of the project. Every time I looked at my timeline, I saw ten things I could break by making the requested change. I was not distracted. I was not procrastinating. I was not uninspired.
I was scared.
Having come out on the other side of this, I can’t help but think of another project that I have been scared of for the last few years. I pantsed my first book, and it was…honestly, it was publishable. It was far from perfect—but there were no glaring plot holes, no thematic inconsistencies, no incoherent passages (unlike the second book, where the passages written on no sleep announce themselves with an appalling density of high-concept adjectives). Then I edited it, and edited it again. Some parts are better…and some parts are now incomplete, because I haven’t done the needed rewrites. It’s a mangled, broken thing.
And I’m terrified that I can’t fix it.
Conclusion?
So…yeah, I guess it’s time to finally finish editing that book. I wish I had more of hope to offer here—but I am still on this journey, of setting aside both the fear that drives me and the fear that stops me. Perhaps a future post will have more insight—more hope—to offer, if you, also, struggle with these fears. For now, I just wanted to explain why I published an empty blog post, and why I have been largely absent from this blog and the platforms I promote it on. I hope to get back soon to my regularly-scheduled programming.
In the meantime, thanks for sticking with me.
I actually think that quality, professional sleight-of-hand is extremely cool. I love it when Michael Sheen calls it “close-up magic” in Good Omens. Is that actually what British people call it? Delightful—and not at all descriptive, when the highest echelons of that craft involve stage performance. But yeah, I’m into it. Don’t tell anybody.
Also coding.