After The End

And so here we are. The requirement has passed and yet, as I said, I remain here in this digital space, to write and reflect and perhaps rant, all depending on what thoughts are in my head. It's not about grades now or meeting the quota, although to be honest, it's not like I wrote every previous entry thinking "hmmm, how can I get an A with this?" From the very beginning, I've written what I wanted to write, written what's been in my mind. That it meets the requirements has actually been, to be perfectly honest, rather incidental. I don't know that I'd change anything that I've done even if I'd been told I was doing it wrong.

I must admit, the urge to not work is stronger now than I would have anticipated. Several times, while I've sat here and wondered what to say, my mind has had the damnably tempting idea of "why bother saying anything? It's not like you need to, now." That's exactly why I can't stop doing this, of course, because I know that once the impetus of requirement is lifted, there is nothing to force the writing discipline that I've cultivated over these past few months. That's the tricky thing about discipline, I've noticed: if you manage to learn it while you're being told to, the real struggle comes from adhering to it when there's nobody else around to tell you want to do.

So I have to blog now. I have to blog as much as I have been, because if I don't, I'll lose the discipline. I have to blog just like I have to tell me to not stop writing just because NaNoWriMo is almost over. I have to do these things, and I have to force myself, because pretty soon, all the lights will turn off, the music will play, show will be over and everybody gets to go home, except for me, because I won't let myself.

Going home means not coming into work tomorrow. Skipping a day means falling back into old habits.

You know one other thing I've noticed? I wrote yesterday about how all of us who wish to be novelists are secretly terrified of being one of those people who walks around for forty years talking about that idea for a novel we have, but never actually doing it. There's even a Family Guy skit about that, between Brian and Stewie, the whole "how's that novel you're working on? Been, uh, been working on that for about three years now?"

Well, one thing I noticed is that forcing myself to write every day means inevitably telling people "oh, I can't do that tonight, I have to go home and write first." It was a little annoying, actually, when sticking to my goal meant interrupting or not committing to other plans. But now, I take a certain measure of pleasure in it, actually; I feel more like the genuine article, when I say I can't do something because I'm dedicated to my work.

It could just be some sort of ego stroking on my part, some little pride thing gleaned from getting that whole "oh, I'm a serious writer" vibe out there for people to appreciate, since, let's face it, it won't come up very often unless you tell people what it is that you like to do. If that's true, I'm completely fine with that. Because aside from ego stroking, there's also the sense, in my own mind, that this is me proving to myself that I'm serious about this thing. Because it's really easy to say, oh, I'm a writer and I have nothing else to do, so I guess I'll do that writing thing. It's something else, something considerably more meaningful, in my opinion, when you make the decision to write when you could be doing something else.

I'm not saying that it makes me a better person. I am saying, however, that it makes me feel like I'm more dedicated to my craft than ever before.