This is not the first time I've started this post. To be honest, I discarded the others for the same reason that brings me to write it now: fear.
You see, I had a two week creative spiral that landed me in a nasty creative meltdown/tantrum. That hasn't happened in years. Sure, I have the occasional gripe fest, but nothing like this. Nothing that made me want to throw in the towel the way this one did. I thought I'd already won the war - or at least the pivotal battle - against letting the outside world's shenanigans interfere with my creative life. Not so, my friends, not so. If I were really honest, that spiral most likely started months ago with little annoyances. First there was a (pardon the honesty here) pretty much incoherent complaint from someone who had misread an article I wrote. I gave them the benefit of the doubt and found a word I could have changed that might - MIGHT - have clarified my intent from one paragraph to the next in a better way. I wrote a clarification statement for the client to include in their next issue even though I believed that the complaint was based on a very tenuous argument that the individual had to really reach to come up with. In other words, the individual was a troll looking for a target. There's was the only complaint I was informed about. I had to read their message three times before I got the gist of what they were saying. It looked like it had been written at 2am by a six year old hyped up on energy drinks and gummy bears. I remember wondering if "write what you know" had taken an ugly turn with some very hard limits and roadblocks installed to keep writers from exploring what we don't know through our words. I thought I'd shrugged it off. I remember wondering if artists were under the same sort of strange societal restraints. I thought I'd shrugged that off, too. Evidently, I didn't shrug hard enough. All it took was a couple of articles and a two week work hunt on one of the freelancing platforms to kick off a very large earthquake in the creative ground I stand on. I had to consult with three of my closest friends. They are all creative people, and they are always honest with me - brutally honest when the situation warrants. All of them let me talk through my nightmare scenarios and then brought me back to reality. One of the many reasons these people are my friends is because they will let me freak out and then we will laugh about it together once my breathing returns to normal. If you have friends like that, hold them close and make sure you return the favor when they need you to. Now, I don't mind freaking out with my friends over ridiculous fears on my part. I've accepted that sometimes I just need the vent. What I do mind is that I broke my #1 freelancing rule in the process of this meltdown. I brought my concerns to a potential client. I do NOT do this. Any drama related to a project stays strictly between me and the cats - and the husband if you happens to overhear my rantings. That the client still wants to work with me is a miracle. Granted, I made sure to keep the discussion as professional as possible, and I only brought it to her because in the most likely nightmare vision in my brain, she would have had the backlash first. Now, you might be asking what horrible, terrible, completely out of bounds thing I was worried about? It's a fair question and one you should be asking. I mean, you don't want to end up on the side of evil incarnate, do you? I didn't think so. Well, here it is: I got caught up in the blasted adjective game that far too many people in the freelance world seem to want to play. One of mine did not match the character I have been asked to create. HOW FREAKING RIDICULOUS IS THAT?! A year ago this one small thing would not have even registered as a potential problem. Lord knows I have enough internal anxiety over drawing a human character all on my own. It's just not one of my strengths. Who needs more drama than that? Four days ago, I was in complete turmoil over it. ONE PETTY DESCRIBING WORD. A word that causes me to illustrate the individual differently than I would if I were drawing myself. ONE. WORD. One. Go ahead and ask why. Go ahead. It's because according to the ridiculous world we live in right now, that one word meant that I could not only not understand how to represent the character well but that I was stealing work from another illustrator who could. I'm not even going to tell you what the word is. See how many you can come up with in the next minute. I can give you ten off the top of my head. Why? Because I made the mistake of reading a few articles and going on a work hunt that pointed them all out. One job ad even threatened to report any applicants that didn't meet all of their five adjective related requirements. (We now pause to really let that sink in.) I'm a small fish and will probably always be a small fish in this world of art and illustration. I'm pretty darned okay with that - especially if this sort of nonsense continues. Most of my trolls only live in my own mind right now. I'd like to keep it that way. I arguably fear large-scale success in my field for this very reason. How sad is that? How sad is it that I'm not the only one thinking that same thought for the same reasons? How much beauty will never find its way into this world simply because someone who could have brought it shied away? Now that my ground has stopped shaking and I've been able to laugh in the face of my fears, I'm looking forward to balancing this project in with the ghostwriting job I was rewarded with for braving the strange lands of freelance work offerings. I'm looking forward to being a part of a project conceived out of love from one person to another and the world at large. To those of you who have been struggling to drown out the same fears, here's my hand. Take it. And take on that project the fear is doing its best to keep you from. There are always going to be trolls lurking under the bridges that lead to your next level of growth. That doesn't mean you should stay where you are. We can go together, if you like. I'm planning to dance my way across...maybe sing while I'm at it. Why not? If nothing else, it'll give the trolls a headache.
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So, I just celebrated my half-century birthday. I know, I know, it's a big one...maybe THE big one. Weird isn't it? Let's face it, if you live to see that number and then continue living beyond, it really is just another trip around the sun under your belt the same as the last forty-nine or the next. Nothing new. Nothing different. But for some reason it has an extra weight in everyone's mind that causes more meltdowns than it does celebrations. Me? Sorry, it's not the number that stirs the chaos. I was very happy to eat cake and have a great day. And yet...there is still mental mayhem afoot. It's the tradition my brain has of scheduling an employee assessment type of thing during this anniversary week...and there is are always a lot of not so great notes in the margins of that report.
Most years I get to simply do the annual check in: Were my goals reached? If not, why not. Was I a decent human in the many and varied roles I play in this world? Yes/No? Explain. Did I learn from my mistakes? Give examples. You know, that type of thing. On the fives, I rehash the ten year midterm. Decades get a second look at how I've progressed since the last one's place was reset. Twenty-five was an interesting evaluation that led from my first breath to that milestone of adulthood. You get the picture. So, here I am at fifty now. My brain is engaged in the forensic audit of my life to date before it decides what it needs to address going forward. It's already issued its first verbal warning in the form of hauling out what I am "affectionately" calling The Bitterness List. Not a pretty thing, that list...and it's got quite a bit scrawled out in shaky letters penned in mental blood and tears. Maybe you have one, too? Don't worry. I won't tell - and I'm sure not going to judge you. That would mean having to show you mine so we could compare their specific gravity and determine which is worse. No thank you. This is what I AM going to do. I'm going to make a suggestion that I hope I will follow as well. As writers (and if you aren't, this is a good time to pick up the cruel little habit) I suggest that we use said list in our stories. Change the names and the events of course - innocent or not, there are protections for everyone in those hidden truths - but write that crap right out of your system. Purge it. Deal with it. (No, I mean ACTUALLY deal with it.) Then let it go! It might grow back, sure. New things to snarl about will show up because they always do. That's a given. But that nasty little monster that keeps nipping at your heals from the past? Yeah, that one can be expelled, exorcised, and laid to rest in your writing. Will it be a pretty process? Only if you consider pretty to look like a bad case of the flu. Will it give you a marketable book that is the next hot read of every book club out there? Maybe...maybe not. You are asking the wrong person here judging by my solid case of marketing leprosy (see...that's bitterness right there. Did you catch it?). If nothing else, it'll be a great addition to your campfire this summer. And it will be is worthwhile for you and those around you. Just think of how much lighter you will feel without lugging all that long-ago crap around. Plus, the world is going to look a whole lot different once you stop seeing it through the fog of past hurts. How can that not be a good thing? Best of all, once you lance that boil festering in your heart, you'll look back and see that your life has been a far more beautiful thing that you gave it credit for. Then you'll be able to look forward with a far better outlook. Chances are, next time you check your own Bitterness List, you'll find that far fewer things have taken up residence on it because you let the others go. Anyone with me on this journey? We'll regroup in the blankie fort as needed. I've got chocolate, and I make my own wine. Just sayin'. "How's the writing going?" is one of the most problematic questions you can ever ask a writer. It doesn't matter if you ask it on their best writing day or their worst, either. Why? Because we don't hear that question. Our ears take it in, send it to our brain, then some internal algorithm translates it into 50 new questions involving everything from our time management skills to how much dirty laundry is in a pile on our floor at home to whether Bigfoot exists, and finally to the simple statement that we are a hack writer who will never amount to anything.
Now, we KNOW you didn't ask any of those things. We know you either asked about our current writing endeavors because you were being polite or because you are actually interested. We KNOW, this. We KNOW it's an innocent question about our hobby or career. We KNOW you mean well. But, once those words enter our ears, they stir our own internal turmoil over every single thing even remotely connected to our writing life...and trust me, there isn't anything that ISN'T connected. As a writer, I can confidently draw a line from the impact of the shape of that one weird piece of cereal in the breakfast bowl this morning to the reason I haven't written anything in over a month. THAT's the type of brain you're dealing with. If you're lucky, we just keep that type of thing tucked away and out of sight when we talk to you. The same probably goes for artists, musicians, and (for all I know) the person who delivers your mail. People are complicated. Does that mean you shouldn't ask? Nope. Because, if you don't ask that lump of gray matter between our ears will run amok anyway. It's a no-win situation. So, I'll ask myself the dreaded question for you today. Me to myself: Hey, how's the writing going? Myself to me: It's fine. Translation: My inner writer is having an existential crisis. She's having a lot of trouble writing on the Horsemen series because the world keeps trying to steal her apocalypse. Equally, she's having trouble switching to work under her other pen names because writing "happy" while the ongoing dumpster fire stinks up the place makes her cranky. Besides, my Real World To Do List is huge. I've given her a nap and promised that she doesn't have to do anything until I get a few things done out here in reality. I plan to do those things very slowly and quietly because I don't want to wake her up before she's ready to crawl out of her blankie fort... ...shoot, when's the last time I brushed my hair? My 14 year old self would be horrified at the swamp witch I've become. ...What the heck is living in my treehouse that felt froggy enough to kick my one shelf out of the space? ...Can I get away with leftovers again today? ...Why am I not one of those people who loves cleaning their house? They exist. Geeze, look at the dust on the logs. ARGH! THE CAT HAIR!!!! ...Dear Lord, did you see "that" on the news...or the other news...or the weather channel...or social media? We're all DOOMED! ...When's the last time I've actually worn pants? ...I'm a hack writer who will never amount to anything. See! I told you how it goes. In all honesty, though, my creative life is actually thriving at the moment. I had a couple of articles (under my real name) appear in a magazine. There is the opportunity for more work from them in the future. I'm working on a book layout for a client (that I truly like) that is both interesting and enjoyable. The hubby and I have an epic remodel of our vegetable garden under way that is turning out just how I imagined it. My seedlings haven't all died yet and actually appear to be growing in their little greenhouse! It's a busy and happy time of year for me. Work on my own writing is just taking a break before kicking into high gear again. I'm thankful for the reprieve. It gives me time to LIVE in this life of mine and enjoy other creative pursuits. So... If you're a writer who isn't currently writing, don't grieve the down time. Use it! If you're that wonderful person who has taken the time to ask one of us weirdos how our writing is going, take the "fine" and let it rest. We'll enjoy the misery of the mental check-in it gives us because it also gives us a reason to wallow for a bit and console ourselves with our hidden chocolate stash. Yeah, I see it too. There is a volcano-hurricane-tsunami-avalanche-nomadic-death-spider-infestation of "everything stinks" going on in this world right now. Wow, it is a creativity killer! And just when you think you have the current load of terrible balanced, something new joins the nightmare party and turns up the music and strobe lights.
As a writer - and someone who is strangely terrible at lying in real life - I'm not sure I could have plotted a book with the number of motivation slaying issues going on right now. I would have needed an entire wall, like one of those murder boards the police use, to have any hope of keeping it all straight. Probably multiple walls. There is not enough string on our beautiful marble called Earth to tied it all together into the ugly package running rampant through all of our minds lately. Does that mean we just give up? Nope. Sorry. All hands, feet, and bodies need to stay in the car of this roller coaster until it comes to a complete stop. That's how life works. What we can do is pare down a bit. Start with the things that you have no control over no matter how hard you are trying to get the upper hand. While it would be completely awesome to step into a room and solve all of the world's problems, my guess is that neither of us is going to get that opportunity. Plus, if we did, we'd then be responsible for creating all new problems - again, that's how the world works. Don't give these monsters more real estate in your brain than is absolutely necessary. They will eat you alive if you do. Once you have the beasties that you honestly can't train to jump through flaming hoops and then pose for the audience shoved out of your immediate thoughts, get a list together of the ones you can. Don't expect all of them to be graceful. Don't expect them to not bite on occasion. Just get them onto a list and then look at them for what they actually are. Some might fall away because you'll either realize they aren't YOUR problem or because the problem that they are has outlived its purpose. LET THEM GO! What you are going to be left with is a set of things that you have influence over and can find a solution for. Put them in the best order you can. Maybe it's a timeline. Maybe they need to go by importance. Heck, maybe there is just a sensible order of joy they provide. You'll know how you need them to line up. With any luck you'll only have to deal with one at a time. If not, try to keep the number small so you aren't forced to multi-task in some alarming way that is guaranteed to derail you. Break each one out into manageable steps. This is important! You need to break them down into smaller parts. "Write novel" is intimidating. "Write 250 words" is doable. If you write 250 words multiple times, guess what you can have: A NOVEL. See what I'm saying here? The same works for everything from creating a household budget or baking an apple pie to planning a mission to the other side of the universe. Everything has small steps that need to be completed one at a time in order to bring it into being. Taking each small step not only brings you closer to your goal, the act of completing each one makes the ground you are walking on more solid. If you stay out of your own way, and refuse to get dragged (kicking and screaming) into obsessing about all the stuff you have no control over, that beautiful spark of YOU will have an easier time spreading its light into all the shadows. If enough people do this, how can this world NOT be a brighter place? So, breathe. Make your list. Take your first step. Light up the world. You get an extra post this week! Why? Because this is an important topic for any writer who is interested in freelancing. And what is that topic, you ask? Insecurity.
Stop cringing. I plan to get you to at least poke your head out of your blankie fort by the time you're done reading. I'm not saying you need to give up the comfort of your personal plushy palace, but you really should at least feel more confident about the whole idea of writing for money by the time I'm done here. Let's set the stage: I've been fishing in the freelance world again and was presented with a really great opportunity. I had my brave pants on at the time and immediately said, "Sure! I can do that!" Now, my brave pants are some big talkers. If they were asked if they could solve all the problems in the world by next Friday at 2:00 pm, they wouldn't only use the word sure, they would gloat about how it was about time someone finally had the good sense to put the whole can of worms into my hands, and promise to have everything taken care of days ahead of schedule. Then they would immediately retire themselves from the whole situation and leave the actual work to the part of me that was silently screaming "I don't even have a solid plan for dinner tonight!" the whole time those over-confident trousers were running their mouth. This situation ALWAYS leads to a chunk of time nervously pacing and asking myself, "What have I done?" If you can relate, please feel free to eat a piece of chocolate. So, here's the thing. Most writers out there have this same problem to one degree or another. You are not alone on the emotional roller coaster. If you are smart, you will forever gift yourself the solid-shake you need to step out of your comfort zone and into a situation where you need to handle the positive project that your brave pants signed you up for. My method for doing this is as follows: 1) I look for freelance work at the point in my morning where I'm awake enough to be coherent but not so far into the day that my inner critic has decided that my skill set is best suited for staring at a blank page and calling myself a fraud. That's where my brave pants are the most active and can do their best to haul the rest of me out of my comfort zone. 2) I have sworn a blood oath to myself (no sharp pointy object required since the necessary blood is already flowing through my veins) that if an opportunity comes along that does not force me to sideline my other work and does not cross any of my lines in the sand, I will take it on. Then I will do my best to meet or exceed the expectations of the client. Why? Three reasons. Doing so not only gives my skills a workout and gives me a new thing to add to my portfolio, it also might bring more work my way. All very important things in the freelancing world. 3) I allow myself about an hour to pace and let any insecurities I have mutter to the walls in my office. (The cats usually make themselves scarce for the duration. They're smart that way. It's an ugly process.) If I don't do this, then those insecurities do their utmost to distract me when I get down to work. 4) I get over all the fuss and handle what needs to be handled. I do the research. I contact the people. I make a plan for the project. (And most importantly) I do the work. I get it done on time and to the best of my ability. Then I turn it in. I don't care what the project is. It could be writing. It could be illustrating. It could be washing the car or making dinner. It doesn't matter. Those are always the active steps. They never change. Big, small, weird, boring, none of that matters. It's the same steps every single time. 5) At the end of a project with my own name on it, I may get to have a repeat of the wallowing in self-doubt stage since very often there are a photo and bio wanted. Those two things inevitably bring out the insecurities again, this time over credential comparisons to any other writers involved and the nitpicking of the visual appeal of the photo. Again, I give myself a little time to vent my worries to the room at large. Then I present myself as who I am and let anyone who bothers to read said bio or look at said photo deal with their own opinions about either. You see, the secret is that so long as I do what I'm supposed to do, I win. I grow. I become better for the experience. If I have to trick myself in these things, so be it. I can always take a break in my blankie fort when it's over. "It was the best of times. It was the worst of times." That quote from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, pretty much sums up my last few weeks. The juggling of it all can be blamed for my lack of posts recently. If I haven't been navigating the maze of daily life, I've been hiding on the couch bingeing B sci-fi as a "regrouping method". I considered a blanket fort, but it seemed like too much work. Plus, the cats would have just collapsed it on top of me. I saved them the trouble.
I'm not going to bore you with my Great List of Things and Stuff, or mention the roadblocks, potholes, and derailments that got in the way. Honestly, the vast majority of all of them are normal, they just happened to all want attention at once for some reason only known to God and whoever else he has watching my daily life for entertainment value up There. Instead, I'm going to ask you what you do when the days get busy and you find yourself in a high speed tennis match with your daily needs. What are your favorite ways to make shifting gears between activities smooth and productive? Do you have a favorite regrouping method that gives you a break without eating your time? How we handle what we do is every bit as important as getting things done, after all. Who couldn't use a few pointers on what works for other people? Maybe you'll find a new favoritein the mix. So, what are we all thinking about this new year so far? Does it feel like it might fit, or are you wondering where the exchange line starts already? Just curious.
Honestly, around here things feel pretty much the same as they did in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving of 2021. My house is pulled apart and I'm trying to convince myself to give it a good cleaning before adding things back to the shelves. I walk into my kitchen and wonder where all the dirty dishes came from. The laundry needs put away. My back hurts. We're still keeping a close eye on our cat after three major procedures and multiple minor medical interventions/medications done to keep his insides on the inside when he visits the litter box. To say that I'm not standing on productive creative ground at the moment is an understatement. I really need a clone that enjoys cleaning and doesn't have a body that makes strange noises when she stands up. That would free me up to focus on my works in progress. I think that January should actually be known as Holiday Retrograde. We revisit the same tasks and thoughts we had leading up to to the multiple holiday festivities on offer between November and December, only we do so in reverse. Eventually this leads us to the starting point of where we left off with everything before the whirlwind of celebratory preparations took over our lives. If my back holds up, I should be back to where I left off in the next day or two. Yes, this might be lunatic optimism on my part but I'm running with it - or at least lurching forward as briskly as someone whose lower back feels like a sketchy Jenga tower can lurch. All the creative things in my head are circling the runway hoping they'll be given permission to land before they run out of gas. I figure the strongest will survive this lull in the creative action. The weaker ones will crash and burn, eventually get recycled and most likely be better for the experience. Creativity has a lot of that type of carnage built into its workings. The trick is to learn to enjoy dancing around of the fire. How's that plan I put in place mere weeks ago going, you ask? About as stable as a jenga tower made of jello. Oh, not all of it. Progress has been made, good things have happened.
The #1 Good Thing is that George (our cat) is home recuperating. I'm still a paranoid, human-shaped bag of anxiety over him, but there is a spark of hope floating around in the mix. The bill was a little less than we feared this time but that doesn't mean that this situation didn't take the opportunity to devour the budget for other important things. I've had a couple of friends offer to contribute to his care. I love them for it, I truly do, but at least for now, the hubby and I would like to sort the financial side out without taking money out of someone else's emergency fund. That's not pride talking. It's an acknowledgement of how close everyone is living with their own financial needs. All that being said, there is a loophole. If your home or business requires electrical engineering drawings, I know just the guy who can provide them do you. Just drop me a note and I'll get you in touch with my wonderful man. The other option is to buy one (or 20) of my books, or read them on one of the online reading platforms where they are available. Share that idea with your friends, too. Trust me, all sales are currently going to go toward George's bill. As for the #1 NOT Good thing, the job I mentioned in the last iteration of my plan turned out to sound like it had potential to be a scam. I don't believe the individual who contacted me was purposely scamming me. I think she believes it's a legit job with a decent paycheck. I hope she's right and I'm wrong but I'm just not willing to take the chance. I have also begun releasing a serialize story on Amazon Vella a little ahead of schedule. You can find it under the pen name Pepper Brin. The title is Harmony. New episodes release on Mondays for the foreseeable future...now I just need to keep up LOL My December marketing campaign is chugging along...slowly, but still chugging. And, unfortunately, the only creature touching my craft closet is our cat, Frank who has decided it's his new favorite spot. There are only so many hours in a day, and two hands to work with on my body. I'll get to it...eventually. With 9 days before Christmas, my focus now goes to last minute things of the holiday nature - and following George around like I've got an umbilical attached to him, of course. Who could have possibly predicted that the end of 2021 would revolve so closely around one cat's butt for me? I mean, I'm a writer, and I don't even think I'd have come up with that. 'Twas the month before Christmas, and all chaos decided to rear it's ugly, expensive head. I'm not sure if the title describes the impending facial tic that seems determined to join the worry party, the sound of the clock telling me I need to get my butt in gear, or the countdown to the kaboom. All I know is that it's an apt title for this week's post.
Now, don't get me wrong. Not everything that has kept me from a new blog post has been bad. Thanksgiving was wonderful! The family was in, the food was good, the leftovers were manageable. I've gotten some writing done - just not what I planned to write - the house is decorated for Christmas. In other words, good things have been going on! Then there are the three emergency visits to the vet for our cat, George. The first visit was a nightmare (different vet - everybody seemed to take vacation that week) but I'm still thankful they worked him in. Now he's at our vet for the second time and will be there until at least Monday. I'm not going to bore you with details. I do enough of that on my regular facebook page. But suffice it to say that I'm a human shaped bag of anxiety at the moment and it looks like I may remain that way until next year. Which brings us to - drum roll please - The New Plan. Before you get too overly excited, this plan is based solely on the desperate need for monetary influx in order to cover our little guy's growing vet bills. This plan also contains a number of if/than's and the first part relies on the friend of someone in a foreign country that I used to work with. Yep, this is where I'm at. Want an overview? Sure you do! So, here it is: Revision of the Revised Revision of The Plan 1. Eagerly await the details of the "part-time position with a global writing community" from "Elma" ("Tina's" friend) a) Ponder whether this is going to be another "editing" job for Chinese "romance" stories. b) If (a) is true, hope that they are at least paying the crappy $.01/word that the other place did while also hoping that they will let me run amok with the "editing" (read that as rewriting) like I did before. c) see if I can get two of my other writing friends in as well so we can have daily contests to see who got the best "translation gem" of the day. d) pray that I don't have to deal with worse theme, content, and writing than I did last time. I need to keep some freaking standards, after all! 2. Finish editing a romance of my own. The pen name is already chosen. A lot of the writing is done. The cover is designed. Post to all the serialized sites I can find once I'm solid with the 1st 1/3 and can then keep up the posting schedule while tackling the rest. (Note: I'm taking another piece I wrote that has no home, making it first person, cleaning it up a bit, and adding in the romance theme. It is more of a romcom, so I'm at least having fun with it even though I truly don't enjoy writing romance most days.) 3. Once #2 is out and about (hopefully drawing a crowd of readers), highly consider pulling the 1st horseman book (written under this name) from Tor Nightfire's submission list. It's been sitting at 180 in the queue for a few weeks, and the odds they'll pick it up are slim, so I might as well consider sending it out there on my own. If I leave it, I won't know until sometime in April if they are going to send a rejection letter or surprise me with interest. 4. Keep up with my December marketing campaign (read that as social media posts exploiting George's situation and begging people to buy books). 5. (and this is the most difficult) Admit that owning Mom's place is not a joyful experience that brings long term stable income to the table. Talk to my brother. Most likely put a for sale sign on the property while also trying to find a good renter once our current one officially moves to her new home. Hope it sells quickly. 6. Dig around in my various folders and find all of the stuff that can be wrestled into a new collection of short stories. Manhandle it into a new book. Release willy-nilly and then do my best to promote the hell out of it. 7. Rummage through my horde of artwork and craft closet. Figure out how to sell some of it. (Note: Hey, at least I'll have next year's Christmas gifts under way when nothing sells, right?) 8. If all that fails, consider content writing and signing up on the freelancing sites again. Attempt to keep my soul in tact and relatively unscathed while dealing with that particular abyss. 9. Plug ears when Scott tells me that plenty of people make decent money selling pictures of their feet on the sketchy side of the internet. Try not to ponder this idea too seriously. Maybe give myself a pedicure... So, there you have it folks. That is the general direction things are going in my creative life. I mean, in the scheme of things it's not terrible. Things have been worse. There is at least wiggle room for positive progress in the current iteration of The Plan. The spark of hope still glows in the lofty vault of my endeavors. I just need to make sure that I don't lose my composure, chuck all of my meager motivation onto that spark, and smother it. A lot of authors say that they were about to give up when their big break came along and tapped them on the shoulder. Here's hoping mine sees this as a good time to come to my doorstep. This week's question to myself is: Can I write 35,000-ish words and finish up this rough draft before the end of November. The answer is: Hmmmm....maybe?
Will those words be spectacular? No. No they will not. They will require massive rewriting and editing, but hey, they are in great company because so do the 53,713 words currently in the file. for those of you wondering, yes, this is normal. Rough drafts are exactly what they imply: Rough. They are the writer's way of getting the plot and characters on the page in their crudest form. We are telling ourselves the story so that we can then refine it for an audience. I suspect that this particular rough draft is going to need a boat load of refinement. We're talking changes made with a chainsaw and blow torch rather than a scalpel and fine thread. Even overlooking the typos that are having a rave all over the pages, there are some serious glitches in its matrix, and the characters haven't told me what happened to the stinking cow yet. I mean, I think I know who stole it and why, but I've been known to be wrong before. On top of that, I'm growing suspicious that the arch of this particular story line is off by a bit. I won't know in which direction until it all plays out, but I suspect that the front end will require a weight loss program to get rid of some fluff. For those of you wondering, I don't consider the rough draft to be the "First draft". The First Draft title goes to the piece after the main concerns are addressed and I wrestle it into something that can be read coherently. Considering the app I'm using right now let's all of the typos sit there giggling gleefully without so much as a red squiggly underline to point them out, this thing might as well be written in ancient Sanskrit. I blame autocorrect for my lazy typing skills. I truly do. A First Draft is not the goal right now, though. I'm just trying to finish step one. Sure, I'm behind. My revised schedule-which I completely ignored when it mattered-says I'm supposed to be finished this week. This not going to happen. BUT, I failed forward. I'm inching closer to the finish line. I didn't quit. That's what really matters. And on that note, let me get back to it while you get on with your amazing day, too. |
AuthorJosie Dorans Archives
June 2022
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