Plowing through Writing

I’ve been — not exactly plowing through writing as much as shoveling through it with a teaspoon. Adding words to the too-short Kringle on Fire has been a task, but I am finally almost at the 50k point. The Kringle books run short, mostly because they have light plots and I am an economical writer. And because I can write them short as I self-publish. But shorter than 45k and they’re a novella, and I don’t want to write novellas. So I’m at the editing stage now, hoping to add 300 words to the mix.

The books that I have in my writing pile have been slow as well. I need to do some soul-searching about what I need as a writer. I don’t think it’s time to give up writing yet, but it’s time to understand why my drive to write has tanked.

One possibility is that writing is no longer a new and shiny thing. I’ve published, I’ve held a book of mine in my hands, I’ve commandeered time for writing retreats. The immediate reward is not as bright and awesome as it was. Another is that I haven’t reached as many people as I thought I would. I had a fantasy that I would have a small but devoted readership, and that hasn’t happened. A third possibility is that I have doubts about how good a writer I am because of item #2. My husband assures me I’m a talented writer, and I think I should take that to heart. Finally, I take more time promoting myself than writing. It’s necessary unless you get a lucky break, but it’s not what writers want to do.

So there are some things I have to contend with if I want to keep writing. It’s going to require more soul-searching than this. In the meantime, I write, even if I feel like I’m shoveling through a snowdrift with a teaspoon.

Soul-searching

I’m doing some soul-searching lately.

One of my dreams has been to get traditionally published. Lately, I feel like I’ve been held hostage by that dream.

The original reason I started writing novels instead of short fiction was because I wanted more recognition (readers) than I would get with short fiction. I wanted to establish myself as a recognized writer.

The reason I wanted to establish myself as a writer was because of what has happened to me for the past several years.

Eight years ago, two things happened at once that turned my life upside-down: my department was disbanded by the university, and I subsequently was diagnosed with Bipolar II after the stress pushed me into a severe mixed (hypomanic/depressed) episode.

I have moods were too good. The medication I take evens out my moods, so I don’t have depression. But I don’t have my euphoric episodes that I mistook for self-esteem either. So I don’t look at myself as that amazing person anymore, and I realize that I wasn’t, and am not, amazing at my job. (I still have low-level depression, and I’m not as quick at things as I was when hypomanic.)

Back to the writing. I fell into writing because I wanted people to think I was amazing. I wanted to compensate for how I’m doing at work. I wanted to feel I was good at something, and I’m a bit addicted to external validation.

Where does this leave me? I don’t think it’s likely that I will get traditionally published, given the market. I don’t think I will ever get the recognition I crave.

What I need to do is learn how to live with it.

Day 1 Reflection: Dedication

My list of blog posts

I have written 693 blog posts including this post. In mid-April, this blog will be two years old. I write almost every day unless I’m fighting depression, and even then I usually write.

I don’t always feel motivated to write. I would find it easy to devote myself to writing if I received accolades for it, or if I knew my writing impacted someone in some way. Rewarding a behavior results in more of that behavior — that’s called classical conditioning. In the case of my blog, readership and comments and likes would be the rewards for blogging behavior. However, I only have an average of twenty readers per day, and I have no idea whether they like my work. Comments on the blog and likes on Facebook and Twitter are few and far between.

Still, I write, almost every day.

It takes dedication — in my case, dedication to the craft of writing; dedication to the confraternity of writers; dedication to the concept that it’s important to reflect, to soul-search, to speak truth whether or not anyone listens.

Dedication in the face of obscurity makes me more solid, braced by my convictions that writing is the work of my soul.