Seven Days In and Nothing to Show
National Write a Novel Month started on November 1st. I have no expectations of completing a novel this month. I know myself too well. My self confidence isn't strong enough to pump out a novel. I have more humble goals, though -- a completed comic-book script (and if I can get an artist on it, a completed comic) by the end of the month. I'm having a tough time with ideas. I have a few ideas, mind you, but that self-confidence thing kicks in again, and I start to wonder if the story I think I'm about to tell is worth telling. I think it falls back on the idea of authority. Do I feel I have the authority to create, by which I mean, do I feel that I can tell a story with the force of conviction that will compel an audience to, say, read to the end? Part of this lack of conviction comes from work... At Square, everything I did (editorially speaking) felt like it had conviction behind it, that my coworkers invested in me a trust, a reliance on the quality of my work. I don't feel any outright disrespect -- my opinion is clearly important, my work is clearly valued, but I feel marginalized. I'm working on one, two titles from time to time, while a coworker of mine is writing, literally, all of our big titles simultaneously, while writing the latest rev of print materials and all manner of other works. I'm bored to tears on the second-string titles and he's stretched to breaking on the blockbusters.
This is just shoddy workload management from on high, I realize, but I wind up feeling like the higher-ups would rather have marginal work from the other writer than have me work on the A-list titles at all. And it's even worse for the new writer -- he's getting the third-tier stuff, the titles that the management doesn't even care about. It's not that he's not good, and (without braggin) it's not that I'm not good. And yet, I wind up feeling not trusted to share the workload on those other titles, as though they're "too important" to be risked on either of the newer guys. I don't mind working here, and I'm proud of the work I've done (although none of it has struck me as of the same quality as the work at Square), and yet I find myself stagnating, looking for better outlets. I want something more satisfying to do.
Eating: Oatmeal
Drinking: Coffee, four hours old
Listening: Just Say Yesterday, volume VI, a Sire Records compilation of 80s tunes
Thinking: Where do I go now?
