Forgive me, Susie, it’s been – hold on while I check – 19 days since my last post. I wasn’t planning on writing here daily, but I think my original goal was at least once every two weeks.
The whys of a period of not writing for me never have the reason of “nothing to say” and almost always rely on outside circumstances. This is not my first blog; I’m now writing 3 separate ones (sorted by topic, somewhat). With the first blog – or the first time I tried to start one – my issue for delay was fear, plain and simple. Why do it? Who’s going to read it? Will I be taken seriously? I pushed myself into doing it. It took 3 separate starts before it ‘took’. Then when I got into it and got a modest (very modest) following, it got easier – as in, less fearful.
*One thing I learned about fear in writing, as far as it goes for me, is that when I notice I’m most afraid to hit the publish button is the time that I have to. It’s a sign to me that what I wrote was my most genuine.
I think we tend to start new things when we realize we are in times of transition, and then later realize that it might have been better to have waited til the end of the transitional period to start something. Routine anything is hard to maintain when everything seems to be changing.
My original blog (the one that stuck) was put aside temporarily while I finished my book; I wanted to make sure I wasn’t writing the same things in both the book and the blog. Plus, those last few ‘hours’ of the rewrites and edits take an exhausting amount of time, and like most writers I have a day job that I can’t yet quit.
The next ‘blog interruption’ came in the form of marketing said book. All of my ‘free’ time was spent on getting the word out, contacting independent book stores (and visiting independent bookstores when I was able to put aside some money to buy a significant stash of books to deliver), tweaking all of my social media accounts to allow for promoting and selling, and then wasting time grumbling about how much more work it was to promote a book than to write it.
It was that grumbling period, though, that prompted this particular blog. I wanted to write about writing. I see many other people blogging about how to write, sell, promote (and I thank every one of them for their time and valuable information), but that wasn’t what I wanted to do; I wanted to focus on the life of a writer, my life as a writer-with-a-day-job, because I know my experiences are not isolated. All of us writers (those of us who are not yet fortunate enough to just be the writers we know we are) experience so many of the same issues regarding familial and friend support (or non-support), being taken seriously enough to be ‘allowed’ the time to write by our immediate circles – even my cats think they can dictate whether or not it’s time for me to write, dealing with insecurity and sense of worth regarding our work, managing our time to be able to write, and learning the steps of self-promotion (and all the new insecurity that gets dredged up with that).
Right now (obviously), my issue is with time management. I’ll be honest, right now this period of transition (and I have to force myself to look at it that way to make myself understand it is temporary) is especially difficult for me; I’ve been forced to realize and admit that I’m dealing with a depression I’ve never sunk to the depths of before. I may write more about that later, but for right now I’ll say that depression is a knock-out punch to motivation. I want to write, but sometimes can’t even work myself up into enough enthusiasm to sit my ass at the computer.
Another silly deterrent of mine isn’t time so much as enough time. Part of my previously mentioned ‘condition’ is a strong resentment (best I could say) to my job. Nothing frustrates me more than being at my computer and writing (happily writing) and having to stop because I have to go to work. We all have peeves with normal interruptions, I know, but I realized sometimes I would just rather not write than deal with the total frustration of that kind of interruption because I would go to work more resentful than I already was.
Yeah, I’m working on that.
There’s also an odd dichotomy at work for me, too. I’m promoting a book that I am actually very enthusiastic about and proud of. Sometimes I feel like I’m two people: on one side, I’m the sassy, opinionated female and writer I want to be – or know I am; and then there’s the other side: the depressed, under-employed (overworked), menopausal, and trapped slug.
In a clearer moment, like right now, I can see a little benefit in the lessons I’m learning about time, change (which I’ve actually always been a big fan of), and synchronicity. It’s the synchronicity and small serendipitous ‘coincidences’ (and I don’t believe in coincidence) that I’m so happy I still have my wits about me to notice.
My first ex used to call me a “Fucking Cheerleader” – and he never meant that in a good way. Since I do believe negativity is a choice of focus, I can see how annoying I would be to someone who wants to believe that the world is a terrible place and that life is supposed to be hard. I can even see how annoying it is for me when that inner cheerleader shoves those fucking pom-poms in my own face when I want to wallow.
She is here with me now, and I’m letting her sit next to me for now. And I’m writing.
And I’m going to hit the ‘publish’ button in a few minutes, even though my original plan was to write about the ideas I came up with to ‘help manage writing time during changing times’ and I never got to that.
Because, at least, I’m back in the saddle.
Rah-Rah-Rah!
A Life In and Of Writing 