Writing Is Not Happening

This is the longest I have gone without writing. I am concerned about this, because I’m afraid I’m losing the habit. I can think of some reasons I have had so much trouble writing.

First reason is that I am facing the fact that my books may never get enough readers. It takes a miracle to get attention. Or notoriety, but I’m reluctant to go that far to get readers. I usually combat this by reminding myself that my focus should be on writing for the sake of writing. That doesn’t always work.

4×4 or truck stuck in the mud at sunset on the Applegate Trail, Black Rock Desert, NW Nevada, US

Which brings me to crippling self-doubt. I compare myself to people who get published and selling books, and I feel that there’s something wrong with my writing that readers avoid it. This is contradictory with the first reason — if people aren’t buying my books, how do they know that they’re bad? My mind is not listening to reason, however.

Third, but just as important, is that I am not finding flow in my writing lately. I’m working on a novella based in the Hidden in Plain Sight universe, and it is bogging down before it’s even started because of my nagging feeling that I have not structured it right. The other, the latest Kringle book, is likewise bogging down because of structural issues. I’m using an outline but still struggling with this.

Part of this is that none of my ideas have captured my imagination. They all feel like contractual obligations, like that album the band had to make because the record company wanted them to.

Thus, I have fallen out of the habit of writing except for this blog. I write it every day, at this point for 170 days running. Maybe this is a good thing because I have a challenging spring semester with one of my classes. Maybe this helps me in the seed-starting season (we’re going to have a garden this year if it kills us, and that’s my responsibility).

I could give up writing — I have enough books to edit and release that I’ll be releasing books yearly for the next three years. I have written sufficient books to call myself an author. I would never have to release another book other than the ones I have already written. But I miss the flow of writing, something that helped my well-being and which defined me.

I need some reassurance, some encouragement, some breakthroughs in plotting or an idea that excites me. I need one of those factors to budge so I get motivated to write.

No Motivation (again?)

I have written nothing substantial for almost three weeks. I am panicking.

Writing is my flow activity, yet I don’t feel like writing. I have no ideas possessing me; the item I was writing seems to have bogged down. I have briefly thought of putting the writing down, doubting my ability to write. Standing at a crossroads, I ponder the path I will take (and cringe at this sentence.)

I need to get motivated. I need something to write, something that captures my imagination, which seems to have gone on strike. Not necessarily to get another novel written; I have too many novels already. But just to write something.

I’ve gone through this before, haven’t I?

Working out a Rhythm

At the end of week 2 of classes, I am still trying to get a rhythm to my days so I can write.

Three out of four Monday afternoons I will have meetings. Fifty percent of Tuesday afternoons I will have meetings as well. Unless I start writing in the evenings, and I’m often too tired by then, I will not be writing on those days. That gives me late afternoons Wednesday-Friday most of the time.

I have a Saturday routine that’s working. That’s a start.

I’ll keep you posted. I miss my flow activity!

Role Frustration

I need to get back into the swing of writing now that the semester has settled in.I need to find something more compelling to write than the Kel and Brother Coyote sequel; it’s a lot of fun but it feels like I’m doing it just to fill time. I’m absolutely pantsing the story, ignoring the outline I made for it.

I feel like my professor role has usurped my writer role. I figure this will get better when I’m more acclimated to the current professing duties; it is, after all, only the second week of the semester.

I have weathered this before; I will again. The right book will find me. I will get into the swing of writing. I just have to keep telling myself this.

Contractual Obligation

I don’t want to break my 52-day writing streak, so I feel obligated to write a short note. Day 2 of the fall semester and I feel like I’ve been at it for a week. It has been a busy day today; I was on task for six hours straight. Finally, I have nothing on my plate^* and I feel a bit let down.

Is work a flow activity? Despite the fact that I got things done like a boss^**, I felt like most of my tasks didn’t engage my mind optimally. Teaching is a flow activity most days. Answering emails is not. Revising documents is not. Not everything can be a flow activity!

I’m not feeling like writing right now. My brain is tired and not feeling really creative right now. I’ll sit with my work and see if I feel like I can engage.

Scottish straight baby cat on pink background, closeup

^* This is another Americanism for my foreign readers. To have nothing on one’s plate is to have finished all one’s tasks for the day. It’s a good thing.

^** “Like a boss” is another Americanism. It’s pretty self-explanatory; it’s also a good thing.

Addicted to the Flow

I sit in my writing chair (the loveseat near the front window) feeling uninspired. This doesn’t sit well with me, because I am addicted to the flow.

I’ve talked about flow before, but it’s worth mentioning again. Flow is a state in which a person is completely involved in what they’re doing. Time slips by and the person experiences mastery of the task, an optimal level of challenge and competency. Flow contributes to well-being through accomplishment and a state of near-meditation.

I get my flow from writing, and that’s what brings me back to writing again and again. If I never published again, I think I would still write because of the feeling of flow. It took me years to accept that experiencing flow was enough of a reason to continue writing.

I’m looking for my state of flow today, and I don’t know if the current project is captivating enough for me to find it. I’ll be looking for a new project soon, maybe the right short story.

The Right Direction?

Sometimes I get into those soul-searching sessions when I wonder if I’m doing the right thing with my time, whether there’s a better thing to do with my time, and what that better thing to do would be.

I think of this a lot when it comes to writing. I’m not tired of writing, but I feel like I’m slowing down a bit. It doesn’t help that I have two books I’m writing at once, one more than the other. I’m having a problem with only being able to write smoothly at Starbucks and not at home. I’m not sure what the focus problem is, but I think the low-level distraction of a coffeehouse helps me write.

I’m also dealing with the scourge of writing — the nagging little voice that tells me all I write is crap. It’s quite persistent. It’s killing my joy and distracting me.

On the other hand, writing is my favorite flow activity. It occupies my mind better than few other things. I can lose time while writing; it’s almost hypnotic. My other flow activity is moulage, but I really don’t get too many opportunities to do that. And I don’t know if there’s anything to pass my time that I enjoy as much.

I want to hang on to writing; I want to continue being a writer. I want to sell my work and have others read it. I’m going to have to find ways of overcoming the problems.

Using Templates to Shape a Book

I use templates to remind me of the shape of a book as I’m writing it.

Templates are scripts of a sort that one can use to structure writing to fit readers’ expectations. Readers expect a story structured such that the action rises to climax and then subsides. Other techniques can be added to this, such as interactions between a character and other characters to highlight tensions.

Well-written book guides offer plotting systems. Save the Cat Writes a Novel is an example of one, and one I highly recommend as a method to organize one’s plot. But I go one step further with templates that writers can load into Scrivener, the writing software I use.

One of these is Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes. In twenty chapters, she lays out a romance novel’s structure with uncomplicated prompts for the reader. For example:

The column at the left shows the chapter outline with evocative titles. In the notecard view here, you can see each chapter’s prompt. When you are in chapter view (writing the chapter), you will see the full prompt in the upper right corner area called synopsis (seen below).

This is my go-to for writing romance novels. My go-to for writing fantasy novels is a template that no longer can be found on the internet (or if you can find it please let me know so I can give the writer credit). It’s based on the timing of Save the Cat templates, but it does the math for you. It looks like this:

In the left-hand column are the basic parts of the book, and the number of chapters is their relative weight in the book. Given roughly equal chapters, these distributions of chapters should give you the recommended pacing.

The template also gives guidance:

At the far right, there is a description in each section for what should happen in a section.

These are the templates I currently use for writing. I like using templates because I’m a plantser — someone who likes some structure but likes to flow within the structure. These templates allow for that. I write my chapter synopses within the guidance of the template and I’m ready to write.

Another Direction

I’ve been stymied on my work in progress, Avatar of the Maker. I’m in the section where things are ramping up to a battle, and uncertain as to how to make the action actually ramp up (or should it be the calm before the storm as I am currently writing it?)

I feel like I have lost my bearings, that I have lost my flow. This is why I’ve gone back to the beginnings (even though I’m not done with the book) to edit and get a feeling for what comes before. I’m hoping this will give me a jumpstart for the flow of the second half of the book.

After going through the first 4 chapters, I have a good feel for the beginning. Now to go through and see where the flow bogs down.

Here’s Chapter 4: The Great Loss

In a place where humans had never set foot, a group of beings sat in a room. Its black crystal walls twinkled with light from the molten white floor, from the white table, and from the participants themselves. The shortage of light did not lessen the sterility of the surroundings.
“The Apocalypse proved that we, the Archetypes, no longer take our protection of the human patterns seriously,” Luke said, his hands tented in thought. His ruggedness, in contrast to the unlined faces of the others, announced that he had, unlike most Archetypes, committed evil — in his case, for the sake of good. Also, unlike most Archetypes, he had repented, which gave him a perspective that could be called almost human.
“But they still embrace evil.” The Baraka Archetype, short and spare like his people, leaned forward. “They fight wars. They envy each other and they commit crimes out of greed.”
“Or out of want, or madness, or a dozen other things.” Luke grimaced, reflecting a view of reality that had wavered from the neutrality of an Archetype. Su, his consort and the Oldest of the Oldest, watched impassively. She knew how to play the game, Luke noted, something he had lost in his long association with humankind.
“If we give them the full impact of their cultural histories — not just the facts, but the fear, the hatred, the xenophobia.” The Bering Strait Archetype looked at his hands.
“How do you know it will make them worse? They already hold the oral tradition of their peoples’ pasts, and those seem to inspire xenophobia, it’s true. But what if they remember the full impact of the losses of war and weigh it against their hatred — would they decide to fight more? Or would they lay their weapons down?” Luke took a breath, to calm himself down, to wear the gravitas of the Archetype instead of the passion of humans. “What if gaining their cultural histories changes nothing at all, given that they are vast hybrids of cultures? The point is, if the humans kill each other, millions of them will not die with each death. If we keep holding the patterns of the humans — “
“One of our deaths will kill millions of humans through the loss of their patterns,” Su said. “Which is why the Maker created us nearly immortal. Yet the Triumvirate, Archetypes themselves, almost killed Lilith, who held the patterns of all women. Can we guarantee this won’t happen again?”
Suddenly, the residents of the room stopped speaking. Luke felt as if a wind had cut through his immortal bones and chilled them. Then he felt the weight, a weight of the history of countless descendants of the people of the seax, the knife that gave its name to the Saxons. And then his burdens vanished, and he felt a hollowness inside. The gasps from the others at the table echoed him.
“What — what was that?” The Ibero-Maurusian broke the silence.
“I think — Su, did you notice anything?” Luke asked, noting the puzzled look on his consort’s face.
“Nothing.” Su looked at the others at the table. “Except that all of you around me froze for a moment and slumped forward. As if something took something weighty from you.”
“As it has.” The Bering Strait Archetype pressed his lips together. “I think — I think we lost our patterns, and if so, the Maker has taken them from us.” He sounded bewildered, as if he lost something more than the weight of patterns.
“I must…” the Ibero-Maurusian said, then paused. “No.” She spoke slowly, as if weighing each word. “We may be the only ones whose have lost our patterns.”
“But what does this mean?” The Baraka pounded a fist on the table.
The Yolnju Archetype spoke. “I think this means that the Maker decided for us — He will take our patterns from us whether we are ready to relinquish them. And we’re the harbingers of this big change.”
The discussion broke down into discordant declarations of confusion.

Later, Luke felt a hollowness in his entire being as he shimmered into the chilly dawn at Barn Swallows’ Dance. His feet materialized on the beaten green surrounding their Commons building. In the early morning, none of the residents — the human residents, that is — wandered the grounds. Luke sought his daughter Lilith and her consort Adam, both Archetypes, to share the latest news from the Council of the Oldest. He set toward their little blue cottage, his boots treading on the fallen gold and red leaves of a maple tree.
Adam and Lilith lived as humans in the community of humans, to the consternation of the Council. They, and Luke and his consort as well, served as patrons of the collective. Giving — what? The residents showed more courage than the enemy and noncombatants in their fight to protect humanity. Humans proved more clever in the strategies they employed, subterfuge and illusion rather than brute force. Humans saved themselves, with the final sacrificial act of the Archetype Boss Aingeal merely a reflection of the compassion he saw by the humans. Or so Luke believed.
Humans, Luke thought, do not need us anymore. They do not need us to protect their cultural memories anymore. They can fully face their ancestors’ raw emotions of fear and hatred and pride and belongingness.
Humans are the future. Archetypes will fade into the past as the Maker decrees. Other than as repositories for human ancestral memory — the souls of cultures — Archetypes served no purpose.
Luke thought about the differences between Archetypes and humans. Humans lived Earthside in buildings they created with sweat and toil, which they adorned with mementos that reminded them of important things. The building — the house — protected humans from the elements, and the humans’ ingenuity and intelligence protected them from many more hazards. Humans grew efficient enough in protecting themselves to possess leisure time to dream, create, and cherish each other.
Archetypes dwelt in InterSpace, a nothingness of black crystalline walls and floors like milk glass. The Maker created Archetypes to need very little, not even each other’s company, but immortality and idle time weighed heavily on the soul. To fill their time, Archetypes fabricated what they furtively glimpsed Earthside from the stuff of InterSpace, and those artifacts would dissolve into their component molecules before too long, which kept the Archetypes from tiring of their material acquisitions.
Luke knocked on the door of the little blue cottage.
Luke, Adam said into Luke’s mind. You could have mindspoke us first.
I didn’t want to interrupt you from doing human things.
Adam opened the door, one eyebrow quirked. He wore the unrelieved black he preferred, which set off his pale gold skin and cinnamon brown eyes. Archetypes resembled superlative examples of the cultures they represented, and Adam’s Han and Proto-Celt heritage created a rare masculine beauty.
Adam looked Luke up and down. “What’s up?”
Luke hesitated. “Has anything — happened — to you? Strange feelings, or…?”
Adam shrugged. “No. Should it have?” He opened the door of their cottage to Luke.
“The Council just met, and I need to talk to someone. In person — this is not a matter of mindspeech.” Adam’s eyebrows raised, and he opened the door to Luke and stepped aside. Luke looked around at the house, at the decor in soothing blue, the comfortable couch and chair. On the wall hung a frame with two braids of hair — one black, one the golden blonde of his daughter’s hair — in the shape of a heart. A very human artifact, shaped by hands and not by thought in InterSpace.
“Luke?” Lilith asked her father, as he followed Adam into the living room. “What’s wrong?” A smile formed and faded on Luke’s face as he studied his daughter, noting as he so often did how his features reflected in his daughter’s face shone so radiantly.
“Nothing — I don’t think. At least I hope my vague worries are for naught.” Luke settled himself in a chair, feeling the whole of his six thousand years. “Well, the Council has been meeting for these three years since the Apocalypse. As you know, immortals take their sweet time deliberating on anything, especially immortals with as little imagination as Archetypes.” Luke steepled his hands.
“Deliberating on what?” Lilith asked, leaning forward.
“Whether humans should possess their own patterns, their cultural DNA. With us Archetypes carrying the collective cultural memory, the bone-deep emotions of culture, we subject large swaths of humanity to extinction if one of us gets killed.”
“Such as what almost happened in the Apocalypse because I held all the women’s cultural DNA.” Lilith stood. “It seems a simple decision that we should divest the DNA patterns to the humans. Each one gets a piece of that memory and there’s no mass die-offs.”
“I agree,” Luke mused, “but…”
“But?” Adam interjected.
“But just now, I sat in Council debating why humans earned the right to experience their full cultural memory — the Baraka and I debated whether cultural memory would exacerbate human nationalism — when I felt a great weight fall from me. From the collective gasp I heard from the others, I guessed they had experienced the same thing. The event stunned us into silence, rare for the Council.
“Su spoke out of the silence that fell upon us, asking what happened to the rest of us. She didn’t experience any of the disorientation, the lightening of our being, because her charges, the Denisovans, died millennia ago. That was how we reasoned we lost our charges’ cultural memory. Those patterns we held.”
“How?” Lilith inquired. “You said the Council hadn’t decided.”
Luke waited a beat, then two. He didn’t know how to say the suspicion in his mind —
“Yes?” Adam asked.
“I would guess the Maker reclaimed them.” Luke felt that vague, floaty feeling that had plagued him since the incident.
Adam and Lilith broke out in consternation. “The Maker? Does our Maker even exist?”
“Su remembers the Maker, who created the first of us. Su never saw Her after that, and the legend is that the Maker created us to do His work, and She left to create the clockwork of another world. Until, apparently, now.”
“Why now?” Adam inquired, brow furrowed.
“I would guess it’s because we’ve fallen down on our job.” Luke looked down at his hands. “Which we have, given that at best we’ve been indifferent to our human charges, and at worst —”
“Some of us plot to kill them.” Lilith grimaced. “It doesn’t matter that we — the people in this room — fought against those who planned to annihilate the humans. We, as a race, failed humans.” Lilith dropped her hands in her lap.
The three sat in silence. A luxurious black cat, another sign of his daughter’s growing humanity, stropped Luke’s ankles. He reached down and idly petted the cat.
“How do you know you’ve lost your patterns, Luke?” Adam pressed, leaning forward.
“You just know — it’s as if I’ve lost some weight, some substance suddenly. I feel strangely bereft without the weight of the humans’ patterns on me. Like I’ve lost my purpose.”
“But you have a purpose,” Lilith argued. “You’re on the Council. You help support Barn Swallows’ Dance.”
“I can’t explain it.” Luke rubbed his forehead. “It’s a feeling, a very human feeling. At least, being close enough to humans to understand feelings, I can name what’s happening. But I don’t know what to do with myself.”
The Bering Strait Archetype spoke in Luke’s head. We need you back up here.
“Excuse me,” Luke nodded to his daughter and her consort. “It’s time to face the music.” And Luke shimmered away.

“Luke.” The Bering Strait Archetype shot a pointed look at Luke as Luke re-materialized in the dark chamber. “Glad to see you again so soon. We’re not impetuous beings. Does this come from your exposure to humans?”
Su spoke. “What do we need to do to warn the other Archetypes of what will happen?”
The Baraka hesitated. “I don’t know that we should warn them,” he mused, his hands clasped in front of him, fingers interlaced. “If we warn them, they may speak to each other and magnify the issue far beyond reason. I think it’s in our best interest to keep this quiet, and let each Archetype believe he is the only one.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Su asked. “You assume our Archetypes make no contact with each other? Although we are an introverted people, it doesn’t follow that there’s no communication between us. All it would take is a daisy chain of acquaintances trading observations before several Archetypes would know it wasn’t just them, and our lack of warning would be suspect.”
“You mistake us Archetypes for humans,” the Baraka Archetype argued. “We are less volatile, more rational. I believe we will take this much more calmly than humans might.”
“You felt what happened,” Luke pressed. “You felt the hollowing out of your being. How did it make you feel? Rational? I think not.”
The Ibero-Maurusian jumped in. “I think the Baraka is correct. Besides, we hold no power over the divestment of human patterns, as it’s being driven by the Maker. Therefore, we possess no responsibility.”
In the end, the Council voted to keep secret the divestment of human patterns from the rest of the Archetypes. Luke took a deep breath against the very real turmoil churning in his stomach.

Hello! I’m Back! (and a little about depression)

How long have I been gone?

According to my log of posts, I have been gone exactly a month from writing. It feels like longer. I need to write again.

Why have I been gone so long?

I could say “things got busy”, but that’s not the whole truth. I had free time, but I slept much of it. Writing my novels fell by the wayside, although I proofed a couple novels using ProWritingAid, because it was easy and didn’t take too much thought on my part. I dealt okay with routine things, but did nothing truly creative.

I have to break out of the cocoon that depression wraps around a person, the lassitude, the negativity, the self-loathing. I’m working with my doc to remedy the depression on the medication front. The rest is up to me.

I was depressed.

I’m still depressed, but I realize that I have to reach out again to break out of my solitude, just in case someone responds. I have to put myself in the stream of humanity, so it reminds me I am part of it.

I have to go back to writing, to find my soul within the flow of words.

Hello again! Expect my usual content soon.