It's been a bit chaotic here at home, which has kept me away from this blog, but I do want to thank Miss Liz for a fantastic podcast "teatime" back on April 23rd at 7 p.m. wherein we talked about The Night Girl, my development as a writer, the perks and challenges of storywriting, and about the benefits of fan fiction in building yourself as a writer. You can check out the stream on YouTube here, and the episode is also available on Spotify. Thanks again, Miss Liz, for a wonderful teatime!
After a particularly lengthy and harsh winter, spring has finally sprung. Good news: we now have green after what seems like forever. Bad news: this means it's allergy season. Oh, well.
I have to admit that I feel like I've been struggling creatively at the moment. Intellectually, I would like to work on finishing my latest draft of The Cloud Riders, but practice has not matched the theory. My creativity has instead focused a lot on my Transit Toronto videos (see one of my favourites here). This is frustrating to me, as I'd hoped to have a draft of The Cloud Riders done by July of last year, and I'm still only about two-thirds done.
But I can't deny that my video work on Transit Toronto hasn't been a creative outlet. It's just a different medium and a different subject. I've produced things ranging from vintage footage of streetcars on Kingston Road in east Toronto in 1969, to a ride-along featuring a lengthy commentary on the history of commuter rail in Montreal. For the past six months, I've been helping my team shift our YouTube operations onto a new channel that's more stable and prepped for succession, and I've been downloading, updating and uploading hundreds of older videos onto the new channel, in the hopes of getting the new one monetized as quickly as possible.
This has taken up a lot of my creative energy but also provided a lot of creative satisfaction. Except it's happening at the expense of my writing, and I'm starting to feel the withdrawal.
The Bible quote goes "No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despite the other." (Matthew 6:24). But there aren't just two masters here. There's three; possibly more.
I write because I love to write. In this economy, this has to be the primary reason most writers write. I am very fortunate to be able to write for my dayjob, but that's separate from what I like to write. I can write press releases, business proposals, technical reports, or educational books for kids, but my passion is in young adult writing, science fiction and fantasy. And in transit history and videos therein.
You see my problem: I have a day job. And I have a passion. And my passion is divided, which divides everything about my passions.
As a science fiction/fantasy/young adult writer, my passion brings me in contact with a community of people who are also passionate about science fiction/fantasy, young adult literature and writing. And as a rail and transit fan, my passion here brings me in contact with a community of people who are also passionate about rail and transit and who create content based on that. There is rarely any crossover between the two communities (though I know of one or two individuals who cross the boundaries with me).
I'm forced to wonder whether having my passions divided makes me less able to commit to each one individually. I have two passionate communities to engage with, but possibly not as deeply as if I only had one. Right now, I've been pumping out a lot of transit-related content and contributing a lot to the Transit Toronto YouTube channel, but will that last? Or will I end up stepping back and letting others take up the slack and, if so, am I letting those people down?
On the other hand, I have said that having two book projects on the go is a good way to avoid writers' block. If you encounter frustrations with one project, you can move onto the other in order to maintain momentum, while you work on your first project's issues at the back of your mind. The best chefs are able to use their back burners to great effect, though I think this might end up being stressful if one project was under a deadline, and the second project was calling to you.
I don't see an easy solution other than to keep pursuing my passions in whatever direction they take me, and to try to nudge progress forward on The Cloud Riders as best I can, in the hopes that something snags my interest again. And, maybe by saying this out loud, I'll reach others who are experiencing similar issues. This is not an issue to fix, but it is an issue that is easier to handle when you know you're not alone, as I suspect I'm not.