Graduate Doldrums

Three weeks and a day since I graduated with my degree in Creative Writing. Three weeks and a day. I wish I could say I have something to show for it, like a publication acceptance letter or something, but nothing much else has happened since the big day. I’ve read a few books, mastered the snooze button slap and spent a lot of time wondering what I’m going to do with THE REST OF MY LIFE.

I can think of nothing worse than coming to the end of the path I have walked for several years and seeing the eternal void of the rest of my life yawn before me. Except for maybe anchovies. And spiders. But seriously. My life has been planned out up until this very moment. Graduation was the Godot I was waiting for. And now I’ve achieved it. So what’s next?!

Ideally, I’d like to get published. The only problem is getting published is a long hard process that involves a lot of trial and failure. Writing short stories and articles are not my strong point, so that provides a small problem. Disconnect is at least a year out from being completed. As it stands right now, I have no material and no motivation.

If there is anything I learned in college, this last semester in particular, it was that nothing comes without work. Any successes I had came after I put forth effort. I didn’t succeed until my fingers hit the keyboard. It didn’t matter what I produced as long as it was something that could be fixed. Anytime I vomited a draft I could later revise, it reduced stress and I got great feedback. So what else can I learn from this? Not only does work produce results, but the point of writing is to write.

I realize I’ve talked about the point of writing being writing before, but here is an example where it really comes into play. Most of my classes required a lot of writing, and because of due dates and my schedule, I was always drafting one thing or another. I have never drafted so heavily in my school career, and I discovered that the initial drafts were the hard part. I forced myself to turn off my internal editor and I just wrote. Revising was easier and more enjoyable–It was this process that brought me the biggest success.

That being said, let’s set some goals.

Goal 1: Do at least 30 minutes of freewriting every day.

In theory, this should be the time for my internal editor to take a hike. I can work on projects that don’t have near as much pressure as writing Disconnect does. Write a short story or an article that interests me. Just write. I’ll create a “geode” folder for all my freewrites so I can work on them later. Maybe I’ll get get material good enough to be polished and sent out.

Goal 2: Finish Disconnect full revision 2.0 by the end of October 2013.

This goal will be a little harder. I finished the first full draft of Disconnect during National Novel Writing Month, so I can do at least 50,000 words in a month. If I can pull off 1,666 words a day in Disconnect, then this goal should be in the bag within a month or two.

Goal 3: Work on one or both of these goals every day.

If anything, I need to get back in the habit of just writing. If I can at least achieve two out of these three goals, I’ll have this self-motivation business in the bag.