I have lost some of the joy of writing in the distractions of trying to get books sold. I am a writer, not a marketer. Understanding that I have to be a marketer to get people to read what I’ve written helps me focus on those activities, but the activities themselves do not bring me joy.
Although I wouldn’t say that recognition is unimportant (I dream of excellent reviews and lots of readers), it’s not the important thing. In fact, the problem with recognition is that it never seems to be enough (until it’s too much, and I don’t expect to get to that point).
I need to get my mind off of how well (or poorly) my writing is doing in getting recognition. That kills my joy. Joy comes from immersing myself in writing, whether it be my novels, this blog, or any short stories I come up with.
What brings you joy? Have you been in contact with it lately? Do you miss it? How can you build a little time for it in your life?
I look out my living room window at grey skies, a little slice of the day. I think I can feel Spring coming in, although we’re supposed to get a trace of snow tomorrow.
Three years ago, COVID hadn’t quite started, although I think we were hearing rumors from Europe. Many weren’t concerned because we thought American exceptionalism protected us from contagion. Not that big a deal anyhow, no worse than the flu (as if the flu were a trivial infection). That slice of sun from my window was my world under COVID, emblematic of my isolation, which I spent baking and waiting for the news to change.
That spring semester changed the way I looked at things. People who disagreed with the government’s masking mandate and, later, vaccination push, took a malevolent cast, while those who complied I saw as more trustworthy. I became more of an introvert, having lost the habit of congregating with co-workers. Talking to people over Zoom became natural. The office became the loveseat with its view of the world.
After summer came fall, and the school year was what we called ‘hybrid’ — classroom plus synchronous distance for people who couldn’t come in because of COVID or other malady. That structure was very convenient for students, and very inconvenient for faculty who were basically teaching two classes. We sprayed disinfectant on student desks and tables after each class and kept masked distance during office hours.
COVID has now become, for people, like the flu — a disease that we get vaccines for, which mutates past the reach of the vaccine occasionally, and gives most unlucky people a respiratory illness which knocks them out, but from which they will recover. There are enough cases of debilitation and death, like with the flu, that many people will always take it seriously, as they do the flu. But we won’t forget the year when the contagion changed our lives, scared us, and perhaps scarred us.
A few things converge in my life to make me dwell upon death: 1) my father’s death in December; 2) the fact that my 60th birthday is coming soon. I suppose we can count 3) my contemplations about my spirituality, which by the nature of the topic includes death.
What I’ve decided so far:
I’m going to die eventually, probably sooner than I’d like.
There probably is no Heaven, although I wish there were.
Others will forget me.
There is nothing self-pitying about this. It does, however, make me sad, because I don’t want my life to end. It’s been too interesting so far.
And that’s the thing: It’s not over yet. I’m not dead. If I live as long as my mom, I’ll live 16 more years, and if I live as long as my dad, I’ll have 26 years. And if I do it right, I’ll live them as quirkily as I’ve lived the first 60.
I have some life left. Time for me to figure out what to do with it.
Rest gets a bad name in American society. Work culture demands long hours, and there is a push to work more hours without paying attention to the diminishing returns of productivity with overwork. We go places on weekends to shop or be entertained. We go on vacation and come back wishing we had a vacation from our vacations.
Sometimes we just need to rest. According to this article, there are seven types of rest:
Creative rest
Mental rest
Physical rest
Social rest
Emotional rest
Sensory rest
Spiritual rest
Sleeping and doing nothing are not the solutions to most of these needs for rest. For example, creative rest involves resting your drive for creativity by exposure to other people’s creativity and walking in nature, while social rest means restricting your time with people. Spiritual rest doesn’t seem to involve a break from spirituality, so there’s inconsistency in the model.
I am going to find some time to rest this afternoon. Right now I’m listening to classicalelectronica (not joking; that’s the playlist name) and taking a break from the novel (although we’ll see how long that lasts). I’ll spend the day with just Richard and not embroil myself in anything overly emotional; maybe practice mindfulness. But the idea of these types of rest is that we distribute them throughout our day, with brief breaks for each. This will take me a bit of thought.
How can I do that and subvert the time paradigm mentioned above? One way is to take my free time seriously and not let work encroach upon it. Some employers have the nerve to call this “quiet quitting”, when in actuality it’s “not working for free”. I’m lucky; my boss is a professor of recreation and wants me to preserve my free time; others are not so lucky. The second is to look at what types of rest I neglect and plan for those. I have focused a lot on physical rest; I have neglected spiritual rest for a while because of my struggles with spirituality and religion.
I’ve written enough about resting; I think it’s time for me to rest.
Sometimes I look at this blank screen and ask myself, “What have I not said yet?”
Everything, I realize. Everything in the world. There is so much I haven’t written about.
Just the things off the top of my head I haven’t talked about:
Close-up Of A Scared Woman Peeking Through Fingers
I have a phobia about rabies, which is known as hydrophobiaphobia. No kidding.
I have always wanted to become a carpenter or something else useful. A college professor might not be too handy if the zombies take over.
I have cavorted with lion cubs. It was amazing.
I got hit by a car. I’m okay now, but I have a metal bar in my left leg from knee to ankle. At airports, I get treated like a potential terrorist.
I have written several novels, but I don’t know what to do with them.
I wish I could run. It would be handy (e.g. zombies).
I can fall asleep sitting up (and just did).
I write although I can’t visualize.
These are small topics, but they lead to bigger ones. And there are other topics lurking as well. I’ll have to remember this when I feel I am without words.
I used to be Catholic. It was an artifact of my childhood, when except for a brief time, I was Catholic on Easter and maybe Christmas. I gave Catholicism up in early adulthood when it warred with my budding feminism, which remains, although it is more nuanced than it was when I was 20. I became a Friend (Quaker), and later developed agnosticism, which is looked at askance by atheists and Christians, but so be it. (Note: Agnosticism and Quakerism are not necessarily exclusive, so I still consider myself Quaker).
Abstract design of white powder cloud against dark background
All this preface exists to throw in another contradiction: I miss Ash Wednesday. Not because one gets marked on the forehead with ash, as much to show one’s membership in a specific religion as to commemorate the day, but as a way of honoring the inevitability of death. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust …” (which is not what the priest intones when he marks the forehead with ashes, but I forget the actual formula).
We started from molecules in the muck like DNA and RNA, which became single-celled organisms, which combined to make multicelled organisms with specialized organelles, which evolved to become the teeming masses of animal and plant life. When we die, we denature and decay to muck again.
My loved ones will literally return me to ashes, rich in minerals that feed life, as I have chosen cremation as my burial method. I feel comforted that I will be returned to ashes, to be scattered in an undisclosed location. I hope I will be useful, that I will build soil with minerals just as my soul will remain in stories told.
Someone will read the previous paragraph and mistakenly believe that I am close to death to be thinking about my demise and burial. I am not; although I am almost sixty years old, I expect to live a little while longer. I just think of death sometimes, on days like Ash Wednesday,
I have a bit of the blues right now. Everything seems so stagnant right now — the weather is grey, there’s at least another month of Winter, there are no surprises (hopefully only the good ones, knock on wood) in my life, and nothing I am doing is very fruitful.
Perhaps it’s just the season. Spring hasn’t arrived, and the juncos outnumber the robins in the yard. The snow melts into squelchy mud and nothing is green.
Perhaps it’s just karma right now. I have spent so much of my life fulfilling Big Audacious Goals (although never at the “becoming famous” level because that’s not where I want to be) that maybe I should see my goals fail.
Maybe it’s just chance, or being an old dog in a new world, or a lack of sunlight bringing me down.
But I’m down, and I want something exciting to happen, because that always gets me out of the blues.
If we consider my Big Audaciousness Goal (BAG) as publicizing twice a week, I’ve gotten a good start at it — two consecutive weeks. I won’t call it success until I’ve posted twice a week for three months, so it’s a good habit.
If we call the BAG querying Apocalypse, I don’t know if I have the heart to do that. I’ve gotten so many rejections from agents. I want to up my publicity game and self-publish that one.
Just a reminder that BAGs are written toward actions and not external results. “I’m going to get 300 readers” is something I have no direct control over, but I might have control over what will attract readers.
And there’s a thrill in and of itself to fulfill a big goal.
How can I tell that my husband loves me? He’s not known for big gestures, for which I’m grateful, because I don’t trust big gestures. A quiet promise is better than a diamond ring.
I know Richard loves me because of mocha mornings. He makes the coffee every morning, presumably because he likes to, but probably because my pour-overs taste somewhere between Folgers (US coffee brand) and a wet dog. Lately, however, coffee tastes too strong for me, probably residual from COVID, which paradoxically has made everything taste stronger to me. Richard has made mocha in the morning these last few days, a combination of hot chocolate and coffee. This makes a perfect breakfast drink for me.
I wonder how this affects my romance novel writing. My writing is very emotional, but not very splashy. My protagonists are good people who, like me, find meaning in little things, like redemption and shared experience and maybe mocha mornings.
Today, I taught my personal adjustment students about love. No, not the deeper, profound experience of love. But I taught them that Valentine’s Day celebrates only one type of the seven types of love that the ancient Greeks celebrated.
So, those types of love:
Agape – love of humanity.
Storge – love of family
Philia — love of friends
Pragma – love which endures.
Philautia – self love
Ludus – flirtatious/playful love
Eros – romantic and erotic love.
Valentine’s Day only seems to celebrate eros, and it does so in a big, splashy, commercialized way.
I want people to reclaim the other types of love for Valentine’s Day and go out and celebrate them. Galentine’s Day is a good start, for those female friends who want to celebrate each other. But we should be celebrating our families, our friends, our flirtations, the world. Wouldn’t the world be better for that?
If you liked this blog post, please drop me a note at lleachie@gmail.com or @lleachsteffens on Twitter.
