... About My Commitment Issues

Reader, remember a while ago when I told you about how I like to jot down ideas or things that I find amusing so I can use them in stories later? Well, I have an email in my drafts folder that is designated specifically for that purpose.

I've found that it's wise to save it in my email, because I can access it anywhere and I can't lose it. I used to jot stuff down on Post-Its or scraps of paper and put them in my pocket - more often than not my grand ideas would end up in the wash cycle a few days later and dissolve into nothingness. Occasionally I'd put them in one of a dozen half-filled notebooks I have lying around my room, but then they'd inevitably be forgotten until I happened to stumble upon them weeks or months later.

But the email method has been working fairly well. It's easy to keep track of, easy to alter, easy to find again. So now I have literally pages upon pages of little gems, one-liners, outlines, and quotes saved up in my drafts folder, most of them for this story that's been bouncing around in my head for a while. But for some reason, I can't bring myself to put them down into any kind of coherent form.

I don't think it's 'writer's block', per se. I know pretty much exactly what I want to say. I run scenes and situations through my mind over and over, tweaking here and there until I'm fairly happy with how they're turning out. But when it comes time to actually sit down and put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), I just lose all enthusiasm for the project. I just don't wanna anymore.

This is hardly a new development, Reader. I think my inability to commit explains a lot about me - why I can never choose a restaurant, for example, or why I've never held the same job for more than 18 months. Or why I seem to be constantly turning down marriage proposals. I know, I know, those types of commitments are hardly consequential. But an inability to turn my story ideas into something solid and permanent could have dire effects on my future!

You know, there was a time when I was forced to swallow my commitmentphobia - my screenwriting class. If you didn't bring pages in to read, Paul wouldn't give you a big R! And ooooh, how my fellow students and I coveted those big R's... if we failed to collect enough of them by semester's end we wouldn't pass the class. So every second or third Tuesday for the entire school year I had to hunker down and punch out fifteen or so pages to keep Paul satisfied and keep the big R's a-flowin'. And for the first time EVER, I ended up with a complete story! It had a beginning, an ending, even one of those dastardly 'middle' things!

Unfortunately, the more I looked at it the less I liked it. I decided it needed some major tweakage, and that after a brief break to I'd go back and polish it up with fresh eyes. I have yet to begin that process.

I think my problem, Reader, is that I don't suffer any IMMEDIATE consequences from not buckling down and making progress on these things. Plus, I used to finish my pages for my screenwriting class at work, but I don't have a job with that luxury of time anymore. Even this short little blog has been written one or two sentences at a time, when I felt like I could spare a minute.

It's pretty clear that I need some stronger form of threat motivation, Reader. Maybe you can help! What could you hold at arms-length until I follow through and get those ideas out of my email and onto a page? What kind of prize can you offer me that is comparable to a big R? What do I want that you could potentially give me?

Maybe this would actually be a good idea, Reader. But then again, maybe not. I don't know. There are good and bad things about it. What do you think? Oh, I just can't decide.