The longer I employ my skills in the area's of webdesign, DTP and creative design the more I find that I need to continuously hone my skills in order to keep up with the next technological advancement in these digital arts. Likewise I find that self-publishing my own creations (whether its work or my creative projects like 'The Tree of Life' and 'Sesame Trail' maps) is not just a matter of finding the magic contact within the publishing community (as we recently found out). Everything is work. Long hard dedicated work. Ten thousand hours of work a friend of mine said recently. Its not a bad thing, but there is a methodology to it. A way of maintaining checks and balances so one doesn't turn into a workaholic who neglects social, mental and physical health and mistakes quantity for quality. Finding the right focus is the real challenge, rather than throwing endless hours of dedication at any project.
I struggle with this continuously when I write as I see day after day slipping away while the chapters only gradually roll out. I have so many details packed into the story it resembles neurosurgery dissecting chapters and piecing them back together again in the hopes of getting a more streamlined story. The challenge is to accept fate (writing is time consuming) and absorb the initial 'Fight or Flee' impulse so I can move on. But every morning after my exercise and sending Alex off to school its a struggle to face the mountain of work before me, the ten months without paid work behind me and the uncertainty if what I'm doing is actually worth anything.
As I walked down soi 13 this morning I found that like many street explorations I could not go reach the other side of the road. Stuck between scholarly soi 15 and seedy soi 11, the street struggles with its identity. The result? Inhabitants at the end of the street have effectively blocked off through traffic to either streets and to the river walkway at the end. It's almost cultural protectionism that makes it impossible to enjoy the soi and they intend to keep it like that. I was followed by a housing complex guard who kept saying 'no, no, no' when I wanted to use the padlocked gate to exit the street onto soi 15. Another 'no, no' when I wanted to climb the glass-ridged wall to get to a parking lot that would ensure my escape.
Essentially he wanted me to walk back down the soi and find a legal (traffic-stuffed and sidewalk missing) branch that would lead me back to freedom. But I'm Dutch. Recalcitrant, rebellious. I refused to give in and instead slipped through a wall to an abandoned building site that kept the street from ending on the river, walked along shacks where a poor Thai family washing their baby was friendly enough to let me through their little door. Okay, so there was a shortcut. But it's not a shortcut available for everyone and I still had to work for it. Maybe it took a little courage, a little linguistic struggle, a few receptive smiles and a lot of determination.
So I see it with writing. The true work comes from research, learning and plain old improvisation that is often needed to create something new. Innovation is hard work. Quality over quantity. I hope to innovate the young adult reader market with a story that has never been told before. So many elements in the story are novel to the classic storytelling genre and for a first time writer like myself especially daunting. But its the excitement of exploration that makes it worthwhile. It's a great experiment and a lot of dedicated hours and if it even never gets published I will still have had a blast designing it. I just hope I get to share it with the world. It will take a lot of courage, smiling and determination, but I hope to convince the established order that there truly is a shortcut to success if they are willing to open one up.
P.S You might have noticed that I extended the deadline from Oct 2010 to Jan 2011. What can I say? We need to be flexible in these days of visitations, priorities, browsing and procrastinations.
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