Do I Really Want to Be a Writer?

Is this what I really want?

That's the question I find myself asking right now. For a month or so after publishing Jack Manley I was awash with enthusiasm for writing. I had an Amazon store to maintain, an internet presence to establish, blogs to run and most importantly, books to write. This was going to by the focal point of my existence for the foreseeable future, and I was happy with that. I felt like I had found what I wanted to do with my life.

So why in the last fortnight has my productivity slowed to a crawl?  Why am I watching Doctor Who, browsing message boards, playing Hearts and basically spending my spare time doing anything else except for writing?  It's certainly not that I don't have the time.  Yes, I have a full-time job and a family, but I can always find time to write.  If I can play Hearts for three hours as I did on Friday night, there are no excuses.

So I find myself asking the question: do I really want to be a writer?  The answer in my head is always yes, and yet my actions say the opposite, and I don't know why.  It could be fear of failure.  It could be the thought that my writing probably won't have any lasting value, so what's the point of doing it.  It could just be plain laziness.  I really don't know what the problem is.

What I do know is that this is a pattern.  I go through cycles.  Sometimes I feel like I need to experience everything the world has to offer, to constantly fill my brain with stories and songs and ideas, and to create as much as I can.  Then there are times when I feel the futility of life, and the realisation that in a hundred years I and everyone I ever met will be gone and forgotten, and anything I accomplish with my life is probably pointless.  Needless to say, those are not my most productive periods.

The good news is that I eventually snap out of my black moods, and get back to the business of living.  Tonight I've been productive.  Perhaps I just need to accept that this is how I am, and that there will be periods of productivity mixed with periods of procrastination.  And to always answer the question I keep asking myself: hell yes, I want to be a writer.

WHAT ELSE I'M DOING

I'm on a big Edgar Rice Burroughs kick at the moment, devouring his Tarzan novels. I've read the first two, and they are much more interesting than I would have suspected.  You would never see movie Tarzan wandering the streets of Paris in a depression, drinking absinthe and going to the opera.  Or working as a French secret agent.

As a novelist, Burroughs is what I would charitably label "unpolished".  His books are a structural mess, and his reliance on coincidence to move the plot forward borders on the absurd.  Nevertheless, they work.  They just barrel forwards with breathless prose, and if a certain plot twist doesn't make sense it doesn't matter, because Tarzan's about to snap a lion's neck with a full nelson.  Burroughs is probably the earliest writer that I can read for pure pleasure, because his books are just packed with event.  You never have to worry about slow patches in one of his books, that's for certain.

OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES

What I've Been Reading
The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
About Time Vol. 2 by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles

What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: The Highlanders
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks
Iron Man 3
Looper
Oblivion

What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii