Recently, I started sharing updates and behind-the-scenes looks at the various creative projects I’m working on: writing, painting, photography, whatever works I happen to have in progress. It’s probably going to take a couple of tries before I figure out the format, but you can expect to see these Sketchbook posts on the last Monday of each month. Love it? Hate it? Have something else you’d like to see? Tell me what you think!
I’m not going to lie: the last few weeks have been a struggle creatively.
I lost two weeks to a stupid summer cold (summer colds are always the worst), and then just when I started to come around, I got distracted by travel plans. Doing anything creative has been difficult.
But I’ve been trying. And now that the major plans are in place for the trip, it’s been getting easier to focus.
I’m back to writing (almost) every day. I’ve been working on a few different projects (because I keep finding shiny new things to explore), and I’ve started serious editing work on the scene-turned-short-story I mentioned last month. Some of it has been terrible (I have a hard time writing dialogue-heavy scenes that don’t suck. I mean, the actual dialogue is decent, but I tend to forget about all the stuff going on in between… this might be why I kind of enjoy the screenplay format), but when it’s good, it’s really good.
I can’t remember the last time I was this happy with anything I’d written.
Drawing isn’t going quite so well. Nothing terrible, but… every time I put active effort into improving my skills, I hit a wall. Things go well for a little while, and then suddenly, I just… stop seeing any progress, and I get frustrated.
I’m at that point right now.
Now, the good thing is, this time I know that this is a pattern I fall into. I know that I just have to keep working on the particular techniques that I’m having trouble with, and eventually, I’ll start to move forward again.
It’s going to be boring. It’s going to be annoying.
But I will get past it eventually, and then it’ll start to be fun again.
I’ve got another disruption coming up this week, and I don’t know how much time I’m going to be able to spend writing or drawing. But It’s going to be a really good week for photography, so I’m not going to worry too much about anything else.
Reghan Skerry 