On Futility (Plus a Writing Update)

Hello, everyone! Long, long time, no see. Externalizing my thoughts is something I'm still getting used to, so bear with me.

Today, I wanted to give you a tiny bit of a writing update, wrapped in a delicious philosophical burrito of my personal musings. As some of you may know from my (also scarce) Facebook posts on the subject, I've been approaching draft 2 of Borg-Napped with a bit of a different process than I typically use. I've fast-drafted most of my past works, focusing on getting the bare bones of the story laid out and spending little or no time on revising until the draft is done. This time around, I have gone much more slowly and thoughtfully and have scrapped and rewritten whole chapters as I've honed my direction. In fact, I just recently rewrote the second half of Chapter One and am taking a third stab at Chapter Three. But working on Chapter One again brought me to an interesting realization, which is what I would like to tell you about today.

Chapter One stars only two characters, Takeshi and Hugo. They are coworkers. They carpool. They also hate each other.

After a frenzied rush onto the freeway in the morning, already late to work, Hugo asks Takeshi why he doesn't quit his job.

It sounds kind of boring put that way, but don't worry; in the full version, there is much more angst and shouting to keep it interesting.

This conversation, and in particular Hugo's question, is the inciting incident of the story. That means that it is the one event, however subtle, that ends the way things once were for the main character and starts him in a new direction. In this situation, Takeshi has been a technician at a corporation for about ten years, trying and failing to help/save his younger brother, who is a patient of said corporation. That's a big situation to try to change, and I needed him to make two very drastic decisions right after the other.

First, I needed him to decide to quit his job.

Second, I needed him to undecide his previous decision and instead stay with the corporation long enough to sabotage a dangerous mission, hopefully free his brother, and probably get tortured to death by the corporation as a consequence.

Yeah, no biggie.

The first one was turning out to be a bit tricky to pull off, which is why I revisited my first chapter. As I was once again disassembling my work and trying to patch in something new, I found myself faced with a familiar feeling: futility.

I've been writing seriously since I was eleven (nine years). I've completed five or six full-length manuscripts. And yet, I've never successfully revised a book. Even now, the version of the story that I'm writing is vastly different from the first draft.

My family wonders why I'm not published yet. Actually, they don't wonder; they figure I'm just being a perfectionist, as always. And maybe I am, to a degree. But I'm also the only one who sees what I'm writing and knows what I have to do. The plot holes are real. The missing motivations and wandering sections and convoluted prose are all real. To expect that I could turn out something publishable with ease is to deny the craftsmanship required to make 75,000-100,000 words of fiction cohesive.

But I often feel like there's something wrong with me. I know quite a few writers my age or younger who are multi-published. Some have even won awards. What have I been getting wrong? Am I just not talented enough for my years of skill development to pan out? Am I incapable of staying focused on one idea and honing it? Is that why I keep rewriting things?

I've twisted my dream into my enemy somehow. Writing used to be an escape. In a time when I was isolated and didn't know how to talk to people, writing gave me a way to verbalize all of the thoughts that never stopped racing through my mind. It was something private that only I valued, which meant that there were no expectations to disappoint. And in a time when I was striving so hard to beat everything else in my life into submission, writing remained a place of freedom. When I sat down to write, I came not to work but to turn my characters loose on a stage so that they could entertain me. I discovered the story as I went. It was always an adventure.

It hurts now to think of the stories that I left behind. On the one hand, I don't know that I could stand to reread them. On the other, I can still picture some of the scenes that unfolded in front of me as I wrote. The excitement. The euphoria. Maybe what I produced from that wasn't that good, and perhaps I avoid reading it because I don't want my rose-colored glasses to shatter, but I miss that place and that time. When my goal seemed just a few steps higher, and all it would take would be another year or two of work to pull it all together into a neat, wonderful little package that I could forever be proud of.

Now I know better. Which is why I've experimented with a lot of different methods to help me reach success.

I've tried to be more stringent with my process and plot my novel beforehand.

I sucked the life out of it.

I fast-drafted my next book to reinspire myself.

I wound up with no plot to speak of.

I am currently taking it slow and scrapping things and restarting to make sure that I have the motivation strong. But in doing so, I'm afraid that I'm just cutting down every spark of imagination I have over and over again, too critical to see its potential, and maybe there aren't many of those sparks left in me now. Maybe creativity and I can't be friends anymore. Maybe I've abused it too much for there to be any hope of salvaging my dream.

Long story short (I lie; it was plenty long), I am well-acquainted with feelings of futility. I always carry with me the question, why am I doing this? Not only as it pertains to writing, but to life. Why am I here? What's the point?

Why do I go to work each day? Will I produce anything lasting there?

Why do I clean my house, if it'll just get dirty again?

Why do I try so hard to be the boss of my horse, when I'll probably never have to stop working at that? (Seriously. If we were salsas at the county fair, she would win first place for that jalapeno spice. I would be disqualified for being a can of stewed tomatoes from the store.)

I don't think I have enough houseplants to compensate for the amount of oxygen that I consume. What am I going to do?

Why hold onto a dream, when it's become a nightmare?

I've been lost in this mindset for years, but as I visited it again during my third look at Chapter One, I realized that perhaps my feelings of futility could start to work for me instead of against me. Takeshi and I are actually kind of similar. Exhausted. Discouraged. He's been chasing his goal for about as long as I have and still feels no closer to attaining it.

One thing that I got wrong in my earlier version of Chapter One was having it be Takeshi's first time considering leaving the corporation. Thus, it took him all of chapter three to convince himself to leave, and even that felt hasty. Drawing from my own experience, I realized that Takeshi would be well-acquainted with the fear--and hope--of leaving. Like me, he's seriously shaken and uncertain. He's not sure whether to push ahead harder or to give his goal up as impossible. Thus, with a little prompting, I think he could go either way.

I plan to replace Chapter Three with a much briefer period of reflection on his part, and then I think I'll also leave him uncertain still as to whether or not he could walk away from the corporation. He'll commit to it in the heat of an argument with his boss but be left regretful. Thus, coming face to face with one of the options on his list, he'll realize that he actually prefers the other, and he'll charge back into his goal with a new plan for success.

I don't know for sure yet what will come of Takeshi's goal, or mine, but I find encouragement in the midst of my struggles through a verse of Messianic prophecy found in Isaiah 42:3a. It says, "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out."

When I struggle with feelings of futility, when I feel too damaged for success or usefulness or any measure of worth, I sometimes think that it would be right for me to be snuffed out to make way for those who are stronger than I am and have clearer minds. I'm a waste of oxygen (even with houseplants). I shouldn't be allowed to spin my wheels for so long to accomplish things that other people perform with ease.

But Jesus did not come with that attitude toward his people. He does not despise me for my weakness. He does not reject me for my struggles. And although I am often inclined to disagree with his grace, I don't suppose my opinion holds water compared to his. I don't suppose anyone's opinion holds water compared to his.

I will try to persevere wherever and however I find myself. God loves the smoldering wick that struggles to hold a flame. He will not snuff me out for my failures. Instead, I have to believe that "all things work together for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose." Even in the midst of my futility, he is working. And because of that, I will persevere.

God bless you all. Thank you for reading!