I am being told I am working simply too hard on my writing, to the exclusion of other matters of importance that are simply being ignored. I can't help it, I have to write and it feels like the first priority. I have been known to miss a day of work to re-read a Harry Potter book in advance of the next release, so I am fairly obsessive. But when do you know that you are too involved? I feel I am doing the right thing. I want to get to my own set deadlines and if I stop now, I fear I will never finish and will lose momentum. Anyone else who is in my position? Any comments?
I take a pretty conventional view.
First off you have a responsibility to pay your bills etc, - to which you can add a responsibility to both your colleagues and employer. I'd take a safe bet that they would be absolutely delighted to know that you skived off to re-read Harry Potter.
Ruthless and disciplined? How about being ruthless in support of your colleagues and disciplined about going to work? These are more important than either reading any book or writing one.
The is also a deadline - to going to work and getting your job there done.
If not before you will know that you have become "too obsessive" and pushed it too far when you lose your job.
This isn't a nice answer.
The next bit could be...
" I want to get to my own set deadlines and if I stop now, I fear I will never finish and will lose momentum".
Why do you need deadlines? What purpose do they serve? Do you actually keep to them - or "adjust them" when you don't - which could mean that they are just an excuse - for when you don't feel like doing anything else.
Writing, especially good writing, is not based on "momentum".
I do know the concern that if an idea isn't written it will be lost.
There are two answers to this -
1. If the idea wanders off - it probably wasn't that important anyway - and (you never know) it may wander back later.
2. Get into the discipline of making notes (legible ones). This helps to not lose ideas.
Do you need to "finish"?
This will probably depend on why you are writing. If it is as a potential source of income - it would be better (far more reliable) to prioritise the source of income you already have.
While it might seem that not having to go to work every day would provide lots of time for writing - whether the "freedom" is a holiday, retirement, redundancy or other unemployment - most people find that they struggle more to write when they "don't have to do anything else" than when they have to fit in whatever writing they can to a busy schedule.
So - I do encourage you to keep writing - but I really encourage you to keep your horizons broad - and, by getting at least some social life - to broaden them. How will a writer write about things interesting to other people if they isolate themselves from others?
:-)
those are nice answers, particularly yours Adrian. I agree that we have to be ruthless and I agree that we have to strictly limit our social life-I have none either. Which sounds so pitiful, but isn't I think-it is a choice ; )
Thanks for that fantastic quote from Orwell. It made me feel validated. Raising my coffee cup to you, Adrian, right now.
I, too, am obsessive. I am grateful that I am. I write, I go to work. I have no social life.
In answer to the other points you raised. It depends on the matters of importance. But I see nothing wrong with dedicating all your spare time to writing. If you don't set targets you will never finish. Authors have to be ruthlessly determined. Novelists have to make many sacrifices.
George Orwell. ‘Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.’