Every so often I have to zoom out and consider my writing “To-Do” list, which years ago stopped being an abstract concept and became a spreadsheet that includes a bar graph. Vestigial habits from my math nerd youth. There are always dozens of projects there, so I’m not ever worried about lacking an idea to write. The struggle is the focus, the motivation, and the effort to prioritize. The truth is I always have multiple projects actively loaded up in the frontal lobe (sort of like I almost always have multiple broswer tabs open, I guess). Whether or not this is the most effective way to go is irrelevant in the face of the fact that, after well over a decade of this, it’s just how I work.
I do roughly rank the projects there – but “Importance” is a complicated concept. Some of it involves the money chase, and I am blessed when actual money seems enough within grabbing distance that some writing labor to pursue it actually seems like it could work.
But naturally there must also be creative satisfaction – which is to say there are times that my subconscious simply makes up its mind that this is where we are headed, and I can either hook in and ride that giant worm or not. Truth is it’s pretty exciting when that momentum fires up, it’s where projects like Habitat come from.
I think the simple approach is to view this as a binary struggle; but it really isn’t. Even the projects on my “money” list have to have something to them I find creatively stimulating or I wouldn’t be able to do them at all. And I think there’s another impulse that also exerts influence beyond financial needs and the creative joy of the project. I think it actually engulfs the “money” pursuit, because it’s about the results of your work rather than the work itself.
Thinking about that short play that I learned yesterday will get produced, I remembered that it was produced last summer. And I had two 10-minute plays produced this year, and I now know I’ll have at least two produced in 2014, with a whole year to grow that total.
It obviously doesn’t do anything notable for me in terms of finances or fame, but it feels very satisfying to just have any steady habit at all of putting work out there, joining the conversation. I now have enough quality work in both scripts and prose, and good enough habits when it comes to submitting it, to be confident that something of mine, though I can’t always predict where or when, will pop up in a magazine or on a small stage somewhere in America at least once every few months. When so much of Hollywood involves writing these labor-intensive feature screenplays and then pitching them into a vast, uncaring maw, it is important to get results from somewhere.
That’s an important reason for these lists – because I want to keep producing work in film, theater, and literature, it helps me to remember just which facet of my work might want me to go refine some more raw material. I just finished a new short story, my first since the one that got me to critical mass for my upcoming collection. I don’t think I’ll be releasing that in 2013, but early 2014 is unquestionable; and this new story marks the beginning of Collection #2. I shared it to a writing community and started swapping critiques with people, which is always very stimulating.
These things can feel like rewards independent of money, and I think there is a lot of advice out there that says you shouldn’t be satisfied with anything that isn’t money. I don’t agree – don’t be satisfied with anyone in a position to pay you telling you all about the wonders of exposure and all that la-di-da. But if you’re controlling your own destiny? Feel good about being in the conversation, because it does. And as a bonus, I believe it’s the best way to get the people with money to come sniffing around.