Losing my Will to Write

I’m losing the will to get published.

It was my big goal for 2020, and I fulfilled it through self-publishing The Kringle Conspiracy. I got to do all the things I wanted to do with that publication — a book launch party, signing books. I didn’t sell many copies with royalties so far at $37, but it got the attention I thought it would get.

Now, I don’t feel the need to get published, which was the factor driving me to write. I am sitting on several books in the fantasy genre, and I’m having a horribly hard time getting the attention of agents. One has been sitting at DAW for so long with no response that I think it has mummified. I don’t want to self-publish them because I don’t know how to market them as they deserve.

So right now there is no stretch goal. There is no goal at all for my writing, and this is hard to struggle against. If anyone has any ideas for how I can get my mojo back, please let me know.

My life in writing

There’s days I’ve sat at my computer screen and ask myself, “What can I say that I haven’t already said?” And not just my blog, but stories in general?

Christopher Booker, in his book The Seven Basic Plots, holds that there are (you got it) seven basic plots in fiction out there, and that they all share one basic metaplot: being called to the action, a positive, almost dreamlike state, frustration, meeting the enemy, and resolution. If this is the case, nothing I write is original — unless you take into account the characters (especially the protagonist(s)), the setting, the specifics of the plot, etc. The reader expects the plot but revels in the journey to the end.

And so I keep writing, because I care about the characters first and foremost, and want to see how they fare on the journey. I want to see their journeys.

And I want to see my journey as well. In all of my posts, there is a journey, although sometimes (especially in writing Gaia’s Hands) I go in circles in the wilderness. My journey is not as sharp and clean as a novel or short story, and it doesn’t seem to have a plot. I doubt my memoirs will be worth reading. But as a series of essays, it may not be too bad.

The First Day After Christmas

As much as I love Christmas, I’m glad it’s over. Jolly is a temporary feeling, for which we should be grateful.

It’s nice to get back to the calm of a Saturday in normal time, past the frenzy, not absorbed with Christmas preparations. I’m playing Philip Glass instead of Christmas music, and today I may just tackle my work writing (or making a couple grading matrixes if I want to put off writing again.)

I’m feeling mellow and introspective. It could be the Philip Glass, or it could be the very good coffee (My husband’s my roaster). Or it could be that it’s finally time to relax before the new semester’s taken hold.

I want to mention, though, that I’m thankful for all my readers. I know some of you are bots, particularly the Russian entity that hit my blog 20 times without reading anything. I think most of you are real, although I don’t know most of you. Thank you for reading.

P.S.: The title of the post is from the song “The Twelve Days After Christmas, which is a fine palate cleanser for Christmas.

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays

I am having a rather introspective Christmas this year, thinking of getting older yet still having a sense of wonder at the joyousness of the year. Thinking of all my friends who are suffering — two with COVID, one with pancreatic cancer. Thinking of my father, who still mourns at Christmas for my mom who died thirteen years ago. Thinking of people I’ve never met who don’t have the families they need.

How suffering can co-exist with joy is a mystery. My mother’s last words to me, thirteen years ago on the 23rd were “You look bored — go out and have some fun.” This captures this season more than anything, I think.

So this is Christmas. I’m going to spend my day with Richard, watching the rest of the Lord of the Rings trilogy that I started last night (remastered set) and drinking yaupon tea and playing with my Kaweco brass pencil.

Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas Eve, and we’re up to cooking a decently big meal here tonight.

When I was growing up, the big meal was at Christmas Eve, because it was a potluck at Grandma’s house. I got to see all my cousins and open up packages from relatives and Santa. It was a near-perfect late 60’s/early 70’s Christmas. I felt pretty spoiled, and we would leave late in the evening so that the stars were bright in the crystalline cold.

Christmas day was my celebration with my immediate family, and we ate more relaxed food — in fact I remember cheese, crackers, and summer sausage for brunch.

Things changed as I got older, as all of us children in our own particular baby boom got too old for Santa, and Grandma got too old to host Christmas at her house.

This year, in isolation, we’re reverting to my family’s schedule. The big meal is tonight: Rib roast with horseradish and my orange/golden raisin/cranberry relish; rice and broccoli casserole, homemade bread, oil and vinegar slaw, and mini mincemeat pies for dessert.

Tomorrow we have a veggie/relish tray, crackers, cheeses, herring nibble over Christmas presents. I already know everything I’m getting except for what Richard managed to smuggle in my stocking.

We don’t have children, and sometimes I think that’s because we both had traumatic childhoods. But we still have a childlike wonder for the holiday season.

A Time for Nothing

I’m done putting together my classes for Spring, which was my task for the winter break. Now what? My mind is all for relaxing and hiding from my work in progress, but I’ll probably do something with that during break.

I feel like I could sleep forever. I just got up and I’m already wanting to go back to bed. I don’t know if this is latent depression or I’m just so relieved to be done with the semester that I’m catching up on time without thinking.

The semester must have been far worse than I’m registering. I tend to be stoic and plow through the semester with blinders on, not stopping to lament much (other than my lamenting about lack of writers’ retreats in these pages).

And now, because of COVID, I have no choice but to relax. No visit to my dad and sister, no going out shopping, maybe a stop at the Board Game Cafe if it’s not crowded, but …

So I’m working on relaxing.

Exploring Christmas Music

So I’m listening to something from my childhood — the New Christy Minstrels, which was (is?) a large folk ensemble from the 60s that probably continues in some form to this day. They have a Christmas album, which we’re perusing in our great search for new Christmas music. It’s beginning to grow on me. Especially “Sing Along with Santa“, which brims with quaint snark. It’s very early 60’s — folky and earnest.

Then there’s the Apple Music playlist Hard and Heavy, which includes the AC/DC hit “Mistress for Christmas”, which I can’t quite reconcile with Christmas. I’m holding off on Bummer Holiday, another Apple Music playlist, until I am drinking some Christmas cheer and can laugh it off.

Everyone with a microphone has recorded at least one Christmas song, it seems, and compilations don’t capture all of them. I haven’t seen one with “Dominick the Christmas Donkey” (for which I’m grateful) or “Christmas at Ground Zero” (maybe it’s on “Bummer Holiday”?)

My happiest Christmas album discovery is Annie Lennox’s Christmas Cornucopia, which has been remastered and re-released this year. I could listen to it all day, as it’s the anti-Last Christmas.

Now we’re listening to Kids’ Christmas, and I should be hearing “I want a Hippopotamus for Christmas” any minute now.

Happy Christmas!

Sigh.

It’s almost Christmas.

I’m done putting together my classes (except for minor touches).

I haven’t gotten anywhere on my story.

It just figures, doesn’t it? That story (Gaia’s Hands) will be the death of me.

I think I’ll do those final touches on class today.

Gaia’s Hands is certainly not doing well. Sigh.

Dear Santa, I need a breakthrough on this story for Christmas.

If the Fates allow

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” is still my favorite Christmas song.

The melancholy and longing in that song seems especially poignant this Christmas, when we find ourselves separated by COVID and the measures we must take to keep from getting or spreading it.

“Through the years we all will be together/if the Fates allow” seems extremely pertinent this year. The Fates did not allow, and we with short memories act as if this has never happened. Anyone with family in the military, in service professions, in estranged families will tell us that this happens all the time. Fate doesn’t allow everyone to get together for Christmas.

I have spent Christmas alone and with strangers, in a private psychiatric treatment center and cooking dinner for the poor. I have spent it with family, and this year I will spend it with my husband and my four cats.

If the Fates allow.

This story has no flow

I am really balking on Gaia’s Hands again. Enough that I would rather work putting together my spring semester classes today than write on it.

I think the real problem is that it’s not writing from scratch; it’s working in already written parts to the story. In other words, it’s not a flow activity. And flow activities are where it’s at, according to positive psychology.

As I’ve discussed in the pages previously, flow is a concept that’s related to happiness. Flow is the experience of satisfaction, challenge, and timelessness one feels when one is in the “zone”, which happens when performing a task where one can focus and where one has the optimal level of challenge and engagement. Too simple a task, and one gets bored; too difficult a task, and one gets frustrated.

When I was writing Kringle in the Dark, writing was a flow activity. I could write 2000 words at a sitting; it was even more of a flow activity when I went on word sprints (timed writing activities) — 20 minutes at a time of just writing.

Gaia’s Hands is just work right now — the old plot warring with what might be the new plot, old parts needing to be revised, etc. The story has been a problem child since I wrote it, and I hope that this iteration will be the winner. But it’s hard, which is the enemy of flow.

Maybe I’ll write on my class sites after all.