Adventurer's Depression... AND A WRITING EPIPHANY!

I don't know how to say this, or what it is. I have entered a creative drought again. I dislike them very much, but this one is different then the normal ones. They very rarely strike me, but when they strike they hit hard. I made the mistake of reading my recent novel on the plane ride home. I would just pick spots and casually read it... BIG MISTAKE.

I have decided that it is utter crap. GARBAGE. A disgusting use of words that doesn't qualify as a novel. It has discouraged me with writing my current novel. I know it is better, but I dislike not being good at something creative since I consider that my best skill. I know I need practice and it takes years and blah, blah, blah. It is just what I read in that novel is obscenely sucky.

I don't even want to write this, but I promised myself to stick it out. I think Picasso's Marauders (the horrid novel) will not be making it through any more revision. I think I am going to rewrite it as a screen play which is what I intended it to be anyway. I am much more confident in my skills as a screen play writer.

I will not take the book off of Amazon as I want to see how sucky my first attempt is. I put it out there and although I am ashamed to call it anything, but what it is... A load of wasted paper. It still is a part of my art and it would be naive of me to claim it as anything else. I have created horrible paintings, but I don't merely toss them in the can to never be viewed again. I keep adding or rearranging until the composition forms something aesthetically pleasing.

So, if I don't believe in this work as a success I must push it in another successful direction. So, I will continue with writing my new novel and transform my first novel into a screen play. I will no longer refer to it as even a novel that's how much of an injustice it does to writers everywhere. My next one will blow it out of the water.

I feel better now declaring it a complete flop. Sometimes one has to step back and with an unblinking eye be able to call a work the truly complete flop that it is.

I have been reading a book called the First 5 Pages which has helped me to understand the craft of writing and appreciate it's nuances way more. Some say it takes the first hundred pages to get into a novel and discover a voice, but then one realizes those first one hundred pages are trash... Well, I believe that was my first novel. I think I wrote a incoherently, illogical, unthought out piece of two hundred and thirty-two pages of complete literary slop.

It has taken me a month and half to realize it, but I took a look at it and there are so many things wrong I do not think there is anything I could to right all the wrongs in it. I though of it as a film. I wrote it as if it were a film. I tried to categorize it as something that is not. I realize that, and now I must make it into what it is I originally thought it out to be.

For people that will buy the book all I can say is that it was and is a stepping stone of great things to come. Without the disgustingness of Picasso's Marauders I could not have had the confidence to keep exploring this new craft.

I guess, unlike my art, I have learned that writing can not be rushed. It is a slow and arduous task. Also, like art, I must do it for myself and not for the hopes of money (that I will keep for screen plays).

I have learned by the writer's craft that I do not want to be famous, or rich, or any of those things. Like my art, I want to be good... Great... Better than anybody else I know. That is not confused with wanting to be the best. As an artist I never wanted to be the best. I wanted to be better than anyone else I knew. It is the same with writing. Now that I understand what I want out of this I am going to slow down. Breathe. Pace myself... And, I am going to write the most damn awesome story I can. Not a movie. Not in a month. I am going to write MY NOVEL, in the TIME I want, AND HOW EVER LONG IT TAKES ME IS HOWEVER LONG IT TAKES ME.