The End · 11 March 2017
I am not sure if every author feels it, but there is a sort of grief that comes when ending a project. I am feeling that grief.
While I am sure there would be few mourners if MediocreMan left the interweb, that is not what I am mourning. I am still planning on publishing weekly for as long as I can keep coming up with words to write. (So you can be relieved or disappointed about that news.)
No. The reason that I am in a bit of mourning is because I have just finished a project that I have been working on for years. I just finished my book series, Autobiography of a Sixth Grader. Seven books spanning seven years of childhood. My highly fictionalized life. Oh there are lots of true and embellished stories to go along with all the fiction, but the books really are fiction. Really. Currently, there are only three of them out digitally on Amazon, but the stories (seven books in all) are complete. Now the work of getting them published digitally and eventually printed gets to start. Well, it will start after the editing is finished. Which will start when I get some other projects started. Which will start when I get this blog post finished.
Regardless of how much work is left to get the books out there, the stories are complete. And that is why I am going through a short period of mourning. I am saying goodbye to family and friends. Oh sure, I still have most of my family. And even though we do not live near one another, we see each other on Facebook and talk or text every once in a while on the phone. But it is not quite the same as living with them day in and day out. It is not like we are going through life together like we do in the books. Which is why it was difficult to finish such a large writing project.
Okay. Truth be told, it was difficult to start the project too. I have spent years writing and writing and writing, and when I finally started the project several years ago, it was after years of just thinking about it. Writers, like most people, are procrastinators. Or maybe it is just me. I am a procrastinator. I used to think that I had to wait for the right time to write. Then, I thought that a few sentences of paragraphs were not getting anything accomplished so I would not write at all. Then, I finally figured out that if I was going to be a writer, I would need to write. So even when I do not feel like writing, I write. Whether it is a word, or a sentence, or a paragraph, or a chapter, I write. Whether it is something that will never see the light of day or something that I publish that day, I write. It just makes sense. Writing is a big part of being a writer.
Now that I consider myself a writer (whether anybody else does or not), I know I just need to move on to the next project. After all, there are so many in my head that want to get out onto the computer. There are so many ideas that want to break free. But I know that I need to take the time to mourn the passing of the last project. For in completing my last project, I need to say goodbye to family and friends. After all, I have spent many years telling our story. Oh sure, most of those stories were not actually lived by those people, but it does not matter to my heart. I got to have important people in my life as they once were. I got to spend time with those people again. And hopefully, some of them will realize that my stories are tributes to them. Tributes and thank yous for the time we spent together. For the moments that meant so much to me.
Which is why I am spending today mourning the completion of my project. I am taking the time to recognize that I must say goodbye to the lives that I have remembered or made up or more likely some combination of the two. I must say goodbye to my childhood.
Thankfully, as I complete the projects and make them available for all to read, I can revisit them again and again. And is that not the reason people write? To capture moments? To capture events? To relive or even invent lives worth living in the first place?
Today I say goodbye to my long project and all the characters and events that I wrote. I mourn its passing. But tomorrow, something new is on the horizon. A new project. And when that project is over, I shall mourn it too.
© 2017 Michael T. Miyoshi
| Share on facebook | Tweet |
|
Comment
Commenting is closed for this article.
| Parentheses | #FlashbackFriday |