itesser ink: progress, uncensored

For at least a month I've been worrying this train of thought, and I'm still not sure if it goes anywhere. With 50 posts under my cap, I cease my active avoidance and tackle head-on putting form and word to thought.

All my life, "writer" has been my default position, default self-description, even when I didn't actively pursue it. I've been lax about honing the skills I've naturally found in the arena, but I figured it's where I'd end up, sooner, later, or somehow. Ideas come to me easily, I can view 200 of them at a quick glance up from my computer, but few of them grow to be larger than a breadbox. I water the garden, but don't weed or otherwise tend it much. Wilderscaping.

To put it in quantitative terms, I'm 6 units away from being truly confident in my writing.

Now things have taken a different turn and I am, with the constant support of my husband, pursuing personal definition as an "artist". This pursuit has twin roots with my writing spirit, but emerges in a different place and demands different practices. I cultivate these visual skills with dedication, returning time and again to the drawing board (literally!) to seek out my style and develop my skills in the craft. I feel behind the curve, that I'm showing up late to the game in some cases. Most of my artistically-inclined peers have been at this a lot longer, and that is one of the few thoughts that prevents me from developing an inferiority complex.

In quantitative terms, for comparison, I'm 18 units away from being truly confident in my art.

Ultimately, I'd like to be writing and illustrating my own work in sequential form. I look up to many of the people I meet in Reagan's Flight circle, and dream of being able to do what they do. I want to be able to pull an idea from the well and develop it, craft it into whatever form it will take best. I'm just not sure how to get there from here.

A couple months ago, my simple plan was "draw draw draw, and in 2 years we'll see where we are." But recently I've double the number of epic ideas I want to explore, and the strongest contender is a text-based muse, and I don't know how to please her.

I feel caught between two masters, between two large, unfinished projects that, on the surface, utilize very different muscle groups, and both consume endless amounts of time. Granted, I know I'll never be "done" developing either, but I believe there is a sweet spot, a realm of surplus, in which I can keep two plates spinning simultaneously. Reagan would describe it as a place of muscle memory at which an artist can not draw for a few days then resume without it looking like said artist didn't not-draw for a few days.

Maybe I'm waiting for that: for momentum I can coast on if I need to, for a certain measure of predictability. I tell myself, "Then I'll write all those stories. Then I'll dive into that epic."

I don't know if I'm being realistic. I don't know if I'm making good decisions, or even if there are good decisions. I don't even know if there are answers in the future, or just results.

At the end, when all the rambling is exhausted, and every tangent is explored, and every thought has been voiced, at the end, there's nothing to do but get back to work.