At the beginning of March I challenged myself to two tasks. One was to read one short story a day and the other - to write one story a day. The reading challenge seemed easy. I read a lot, and it doesn't seem to require quite as much preparation as writing. I can read anywhere, and if I can't read, for example when I am at the gym, I have been listening to short stories on my i-pod instead (check out these lovely podcasts from The Guardian, The New Yorker and The BBC World Book Club). But writing is different. For the first week, I wrote one short story a day. They were all quite short even for a short story, but given the time frame, I felt very excited to be able to finish something every day. Then an idea came for a story that was to be slightly longer. I still wrote every day, but I was writing the same story. And that's where the complications began. My Internal Critic (IC), a very nasty, unpleasant person, appeared. 'Does that really count as one story per day challenge?' he kept enquiring in a sickly sweet voice. 'Let's say that it does,' I told him, and then sent him far far away where birds don't sing. He didn't want to leave. 'Does writing in Russian count?' he wanted to know. To add to that, I started to lose momentum. Like an inexperienced runner who shoots off at the start only to be overtaken a few hundred metres later by those who pace themselves, I was struggling for breath. And to make matters even worse, I was getting distracted on the way. Other things had to become priority (after all, I am a mother of two boys, but that's probably just an excuse). Eventually, I took a break. Not literally, because I still had all my other work to do - the one that pays the bills right now. But I took a break from the challenge.
Now, week 3, and I count myself still in the game. Of course, my IC thinks I have failed miserably. But I choose to ignore him and I continue on. I have hope. If I write two short stories per day on the good days, surely that will allow me to catch up? Hang on, I am doing it again. Pace yourself, Maia, haven't you learnt anything from your school PE lessons?
I think we as writers tend to be very unfair both to ourselves and other writers. We suffer from the Impostor Syndrom, we imagine that other, Real Writers, never ever miss a day, or struggle with the plot, or just lose momentum. I was talking to my dad today, who has been writing for decades, and to his question about my novel I complained that I seem to run out of steam, and that as soon as I stop for a breather, my internal critic ruins the whole thing until I lose any desire to continue. My dad laughed and said that he and probably everyone else has exactly the same problem. It makes sense. But I can almost quarantee that I will forget that again the next time that I am lost.