It was all going so well. No really, it was: Confidence was high, stories were set. Tuesday afternoon I’d got exercise out of the way and was ready to roll… then, I got a phone call. After eight weeks, a spot is now open for me to be assessed for mental health counselling. I’m happy, comfortable and very ready to get started on that new journey, and so afterwards a couple more ideas fell out of me. One’s a sequel to my Bondfic that, on reflection, I didn’t know I needed to acknowledge, but have.
Going to bed Tuesday night, it really was like I’d managed to turn a massive corner: ideas are no longer the problem. As it stands, there’s enough content with what’s been written down thus far to keep me going until the end of the year. Except, none of it had depth, they are just ideas. The hardest part of this process, undoubtedly, comes when the ideas need to become stories. I sat down on Wednesday to begin and it wouldn’t happen.
In fact, as I sat down to work, I just wanted to cry.
It is inevitable, on reflection, that there will be struggle when a new thing gets learnt. Looking back on my issues with poetry, which presented over a far longer period, understanding shortcomings is nearly as important as admitting your problem to begin with. For me, the story side of things is incredibly simple, but it is the descriptive depth that separates a story from a great one where I truly lack the ability to be genuinely descriptive.
This is not necessarily an issue when working in the long form of fiction, but when you’re distilling down ideas into the limited word-count format, that ability becomes absolutely essential to pull narratives together. It is, at least in my mind, the ability to grasp the poetic and weave it seamlessly into your fictional tapestry: so well done that no-one ever notices it until they’re done. Then, on looking back, those are the portions of the story which really shine.
Except, looking at my work, everything is dull and lifeless. There is no depth, no massive bursts of brilliant. I am, undoubtedly, caught in the grasp of a pretty nasty attack of Impostor Syndrome, and when that happens by far the most useful thing I will ever do for myself is walk away. So, on Wednesday evening, I did. All my other work slowed, and instead, we went to the Gym for two days and pushed myself into a new zone of effort.
The work is not going to be looked at again until Monday, and when it happens it will be with a lot less critical eye, but with sympathy and understanding that perhaps, being too hard on myself and pushing too much for perfection might well be one of the reasons why mental health needs to be addressed with the same care as everything else right now. My physio summed it up brilliantly: my hip and ankle were damaged, so I go to a specialist who can fix them.
My head is damaged too: the same thing should apply, but so many people are too afraid to do just that.
There is only a finite scope of issues I am able to successfully manage. Maybe, just maybe, short stories are not a priority right now. When I’m able to understand better what exactly is going on in my head, then it is entirely possible my issues will become trivial, because that is how everything else has sorted itself out previously. If that isn’t the case, we’ll deal with the consequences when they get here.
If I can’t escape the clutches of Impostor Syndrome right now, it’s better not to let it win.
The Internet of Words 