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Sunday morning tree time. Desperately needed that.
Gate is at Talus Rocks on Tiger Mountain. Middle photo is my friend Brian and his ‘trail dog’, Arlo. Last one is a dry waterfall on West Tiger, near the rocks.
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Sometimes writers just can’t, you know, write
Heads up: not an upbeat, feel-good piece. Not terrifying, either. Just life.
I’ve been absent. Again. From all my writing projects.
It’s been a slog of a year since being caught up in a round of tech layoffs (the company has gone on to a total of 5 rounds of them, so I’m not expecting them to be around much longer) last October. And when things get sloggy, my anxiety kicks up and invites depression along for the ride.
Then, just for funsies, I got hit by that car in March. Which reignited old back injuries along with creating some all new ones.
So now my empathetic Cattle Dog thinks he needs to protect me from, you know, the poodle down the alley so he yanks on my janky back. Now the anxiety flares up, reinforcing his opinion that I need protection…and you can see how this cycle isn’t going anywhere good.
Shockingly, not really the headspace one would prefer when conducting revisions on ones first novel. Or drafting a new short story for a prompt contest. Or writing an essay for the newsletter you keep swearing you’re going to get off the ground before it flounders around pitifully and ultimately dies like the last one.
And now to bring you all back from the edge of the pit I’ve been resting comfortably on, I have a new therapist I’m seeing early next week. My sister is helping me find, and pay for, a trainer to work with Rufus (aka Sir Dingus McSplootypants). And I had an interview this afternoon that went rather well (at least I think it did, see above comments about headspace, etc…). It turns out I worked with the hiring manager at a previous gig, so she already knows my work, and working style.
Anyway, fingers crossed (and eyes, actually, but I’ve already got a new prescription for that) I’ll be feeling more like writing again in the near future.
Thanks for reading.
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I was looking over my reading for this year (I use Storygraph for tracking) and was initially disappointed in my total. Then I realized that I’ve also read my book-in-progress ~6 times while revising. Adding that to the number in Storygraph brings me to a number I like much better (26-ish)!
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One of *those days, I see.
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Triggered by a recent question from @KimberlyHirsh and the great responses she got, I thought I’d dig out my notebook covers for a group portrait.
From bottom to top:
Rustico (defunct)
Little Mountain Bindery A5 tri-fold
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Whew.
I just finished revisions, round…something, on my first novel!
I’ve alerted my beta readers and a handful of sensitivity readers (one of my characters decided she was trans, so I want to be sure I handled it OK).
Now I wait.
Then I start compiling a list of potential agents.
GULP 😵💫
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Currently reading: The Way of Zen by Watts, Alan 📚
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Watching QI and they’re discussing colonialism. Then this line:
“Give us your land and we’ll give you an itch in an uncomfortable place.”
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Write What You Know…until, you know, you don’t know anymore.
Isn’t that what they always say? Like it somehow helps get past the writer’s block. Or the imposter syndrome. Or the aching desire for someone, anyone to acknowledge that you sit in a non-ergonomic chair day after day, throwing words into the void.
Where was I? Right, writing what you know.
I’m wondering if you can take this too far? At least too far to still call the resulting narrative fiction. At what point does what you know become what you do? Or did? Or are?
Let me back up.
I’m writing a novel. I started drafting back in November ’22, had my first complete draft a year later, and now I’m working on a final round of revisions before I start querying agents. That means I’ll have what is to me a final draft that I’ll be sending out the first chapter of along with letters asking agents if they’d like to represent me and my nascent authorial career.
I love how that sounds, “authorial career.” Anyway.
My protagonist is a middle-age Seattleite, who happens to have a salt-and-pepper beard, bald/shaved head, and be a few pounds (cough…cough…) overweight. Oh yeah, and he happens to be both an HSP and am Empath. Sound familiar? If you haven’t met me, he’s me. His name might be Alex, not Jesse, but otherwise, he’s me. I made my main character me.
I’m not the first author to do so, and I’m unlikely to be the last.
Our backstories differ, of course, I didn’t literally make his bio my bio, but in broad strokes we grew up similarly. We experienced similar issues around our sensitivities as young men, and neither figured out our status as Aces until nearly middle-age.
What’s worrying me is this—At what point does writing what you know become the lazy option?
I’m about to start drafting the second book in what I hope will become a wildly successful series featuring said protagonist. He’s an intuitive investigator, using his innate sensitivities—slightly embellished for effect, of course—to solve what I guess you’d call cozy mystery-style cases for his clients. That means no murders, no gory discoveries, and no gratuitous sex scenes. The former because of my own sensitivities around even reading emotionally-charged stories, and the latter because of the above comment about us both being Ace.
I wouldn’t know where to begin writing a sex scene.
In this new draft, one of the characters seems to want to be a writer. So now I’m writing about myself, with extended…powers(?). I mean, I can’t actually see energy trails like Alex. That would be awesome, though, right? And now he’s going to take a case for a couple, one of whom is a writer.
Like me.
Where’s the line? At some point, surely my creativity will, I don’t know, branch out? Start including details that are pulled out of thin air, rather than out of my own archive?
Right?!
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With as much ‘advancement’ as the human race has seen in the last, let’s say, 100 years—why can’t anyone make a cracker sleeve that doesn’t stubbornly refuse to open, then suddenly rip wide open spraying crackers everywhere?
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I am loathe to disrupt Sir Dingus from his Sunday morning slumber.
But I gotta pee.
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Finished reading: Every Day I Write the Book by Amitava Kumar 📚
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Yeah, I don’t know either.
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Moving back into my comfy corner of Micro.blog...
OK.
So.
I just spent more time that I care to admit importing my posts from Ghost, creating appropriate categories, and organizing all of my posts here on Micro.blog. I say all, it’s maybe a couple dozen all told, but I’m just getting warmed up.
If anyone has a couple of minutes, I would truly appreciate if you could take a peek at my archive page and see if the categories are working, if the posts there make sense, etc…I’m to knackered this week and with my back being janked again I’m more than likely to have effed something up.
Much appreciated!
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Still life with Sir Dingus McSplootypants and The Gremlin.
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My assistant, Sir Dingus McSplootypants, has entered what he calls “deep research” mode for the remainder of the afternoon and has put up his DND sign and autoresponder.
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
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My research assistant for the morning, Sir Dingus McSplootypants.
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Currently reading: Every Day I Write the Book by Amitava Kumar 📚
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Currently reading: Descartes' Error by Antonio Damasio 📚
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Finished reading: Stolen Focus by Johann Hari 📚
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Anyone else play Connections? Anyone else sick to shit of how they mix themes that just. Don’t. Make. Sense…?!
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Hey fellow writer-people, how many problems can you spot in this bullet point pulled from a job description I just suffered through reading:
“Conceive and execute campaigns, produce creative assets, and develop ideas for how our brands value propositions and positioning comes to life”
This is a post for a COPYWRITER, mind you.
If you want to do your head in, consider how the rest of it reads if this one sentence looks like this…
😵💫🤨
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That moment when you’re finished cooking and go to rinse the hot cast iron pan and you remember to lean back so your glasses don’t get steamed up.
That’s right, I bring only my A-game.
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So I’m not sure how to take this. I was just driving along earlier today when I realized the truck that had been following me for some time was, in fact, the SDOT Incident Response rig.
Do they know I’m still recovering from the last kerfuffle I had with an inattentive driver?
Did they figure they’d play the odds and see what happens next?
Should I take this as an omen?
Or am I, as is my wont, overthinking and just need a damn job so I can focus on something useful for a while?
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Dammit.
I’ve been spending so much time, energy, and mental capacity on where to write about what that I haven’t had enough of those resources left to, you know, write. Anything.
I mean, I’ve been revising my novel, but other than that, nada.
That means the blog on my professional site, Strategic Narratives, hasn’t had a new post since well before the redesign went live. It also means my blog for all things miscellaneous floating around my brain, I Like How You Think, has been dormant for like a month. Add to this that I decided back in January to give Mastodon a try, god only knows why, so I’ve been neglecting the only platform I actually like being on, Micro.blog.
Sigh.
OK, so I’ve already changed cross-posting to go the other way, so new stuff will start here on M.B. (Does anyone know if there’s a way to only send non-titled posts? Like NOT this one, which I’ll have to delete once it crosses over, which is awkward). Next up, I will start posting the essays that were going on ILHYT here on M.B instead. If they get enough traction, I’ll up my plan so I can start sending posts out as newsletters, as well.
This setup will let me post more personal ramblings that I was keeping off ILHYT (no clue why, it’s not like I have dozens of subscribers).
This last one is key. I’ve been writing a lot on paper that I read through and think someone else might get something out of, but haven’t had anywhere to post it. I mean, I always had M.B…never mind, now I’m just confusing myself.
Stay tuned for more ramblings!
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