Category: Writing

Okay, dear readers, it is true confessions time here at Betsy’s Blog.

I’ve been struggling with my writing for about eight months now. I mean, REALLY struggling. The fact is, I’ve been pretty disheartened by the whole situation.

My second book was rejected by the publisher of my first book, and probably rightly so. That’s not unusual – writers get rejected all the time. Heck, I’ve been rejected more times than I can count. But this time it was more difficult to o’er leap the bounds of discouragement.  My work stuttered and staggered, lurched from side to side.

At the same time, the voices in my head began speaking, and they’re not always fun to be around.

Why wasn’t your book good enough? Why don’t you have more written? Why haven’t you produced more? Why do you only have one more book written and _____ has three? You know how you want to rework the book, why can’t you just do it? Why do you always take longer than everyone else to get things done? Why are you so slow? Why can’t you commit like ______ can?

These are not necessarily valid or healthy thoughts, but they’ve been buzzing around inside me since last fall, growing in intensity. And finally, at the end of March, I had what I guess you could call a crisis of faith. I just couldn’t see the point of trying anymore.

One day it struck me that I didn’t HAVE to be a writer. I told myself that, because I call myself a writer, and I’m not producing as I think I should be producing, I’m a failure. But if I DON’T try to write, then I’m not a failure…right? I mean, what the hell? Other people aren’t tormented this way. Other people just live their lives and watch the TV and go to their jobs and are perfectly happy.

So at the end of March, I stopped writing. Everything.

At first it was okay. I felt a little guilty, but it was also a relief not to be under all of the internal pressure.

But the energy I’d been putting into writing turned and spun out into strange obsessions, as I mentioned in my last post. Weeks passed, and I lost my way. Most importantly, I lost my sense of self. I lost my center. I wasn’t the hamster, I was the wheel spinning around and around.

Finally, I started writing again. Just a little.

Before I’d stopped writing, I’d been reworking the manuscript that had been rejected. When I looked at it again, I realized it was pretty good.  Not perfect, but…pretty good.

More importantly, as soon as I opened Scrivener to pull up my work, I felt better. I felt more like me.

I think I needed to go through this crisis to understand (again) that I’m a writer, no matter how I second-guess myself. For better or worse, it’s not just a label I’ve slapped on myself – telling stories is an essential part of who I am.

I also realized that some of my issues were because I felt I needed to trail after everyone else on the path towards being an “awwwthor“.  Don’t get me wrong, the business side of things – publishing, promotion, marketing – is indeed of vital importance, but for me it just can’t take priority over the actual writing.  The writing is what I love and the writing it what sustains me.  If I want to stay sane, “writer” has to come first, not “author”.

So, I don’t know. I’m human – I still feel discouraged when I see people publishing multiple books and I only have one out. But  the past few months have taught me one thing – no matter what else I may be, I AM a writer.

I guess I’m kind of an obsessive person.  Once my train gets on a particular track, I do not derail easily.

In some ways that’s kind of a good thing.  It’s one of the reasons I can write a novel, clean out my closets, or mow my lawn.  I might not be fast, but I keep plugging away until the thing gets finished.  I think I can….I think I can….

But it can also be, um, problematic.

If I had more time and less shame I would, for example, make an excellent stalker.  When I’m in full obsession mode, I pull out all the stops and the obsession becomes my single point of focus.

The last two months I’ve been in the middle of a full obsession attack.  This one lasted longer than most because one area of obsession morphed seamlessly into the next until I came back to sanity a week or so ago.  Don’t believe me?  I’ll show you.  Following are my recent obsessions in the order in which they appeared.

1.  Selling books to buyback sites.

Hey – it takes a lot of time to look up over 3000 ISBNs, especially when you have to do them one at a time for the most part.  And that doesn’t even count packing and shipping the things.  I spent hours and hours and HOURS selling these books.  It was, literally, a second job.   Although I did pay down some debt.

which morphed into…

2.  Learning eBay so I can sell the books the buyback sites didn’t want.

I am now the proud owner of a digital postal scale and a variety of boxes.  I have also organized my product neatly into various containers.  I haven’t actually sold anything yet though, because before I started…

this obsession moved without pause into…

3.  Mulch and the spreading thereof.

Suddenly I decided that the garden desperately needed weeding and mulching (and it did), and it was getting hot (and it was), so I had to do EVERYTHING all at ONCE and I had to do it NOW NOW NOW!  I cannot express to you how obsessed I’ve been with mulch.  Seriously.  At one point I was having dreams about its purchase, transport and spreading.  I really hate mulch.  I hate gardening.

thoughts of mulch led to…

4.  SUVs

After I realized how much mulch I could carry with my sister’s SUV, I became obsessed by the thought of buying one of my own even though I can’t afford one.  I started spending a lot of time watching SUVs in parking lots, evaluating them, pricing them on-line.  In other words – I stalked them.  See?  I told you I’d be a good at it.

and then I came back into my right mind.  More or less.

Sadly, the above list basically takes us from the middle of April to the middle of June.  Obsession city.

So, what were these obsessions?  What were they really (besides slightly psychotic)?

Avoidance.

These tasks were not avoidance simply because I performed them.  Except for the SUV insanity, everything on the list needed to be done.  No, these tasks were avoidance because I focused on them to the exclusion of all else.

And do you see anything missing from the itemized list of obsessions above?

That’s right – writing.  Somehow I managed NOT to become obsessed with writing, even though writing is my goal.  As a result, two months of my life went by and I basically got nothing done.

The tasks listed above are just distractions.  They’re just things that need doing or “something to think about”.  In my life, they aren’t important in the deepest sense of the word.  Obsessing over these kinds of things lets me complain about how busy I am, when in reality I’m just running from one thing to another to avoid doing my work.

But in the end, the work is what matters, not the amount of mulch on my flower beds.

Because I obsessed about non-important busy-ness, I spent my precious time doing a lot of things I hate just so I can say they’re done.  And I pushed aside the thing that really does bring me joy.

It is a true fact of life that these little, annoying, day-filling tasks are never done.  There’s always another one coming at you.

Tomorrow may never come.

Today is all we have.

You will always have busy tasks.  Make room for the important stuff.

For me, that means writing.

Hey!  I think I’ll go do that now.

After I moved into the Palatial Horvath Estate, I was intimidated by my closets for thirteen years.

Sad, but true.

See, I wanted to organize them, but I had so much stuff jammed in there I didn’t know how to begin. Year after year it kept getting worse…and worse…and worse. It was overwhelming. So what did I do?

That’s right. I did nothing.

Then Hurricane Sandy came and the power went out for five days. I couldn’t go anywhere. It was cold. It was quiet. And, without even realizing what I was doing, I found myself organizing a closet.

Once I started, I couldn’t stop myself. Over the next couple of weeks, I whipped through my closets like a gerbil on speed. I wore myself out, but most of my closets are organized now.

What had I done? I’d started. That’s all. Just…started.

I thought about my closets the other day as I was contemplating the manuscript I’ve been working on for over a year. I’m still learning how to work with this whole writing gig, so I’ve made another classic newbie mistake – the beginning of the book is polished and seems pretty good, but everything falls apart about half way through. Looking at the manuscript, knowing I have to fix it or I’ll be wasting a lot of good effort (not to mention over a year of my life), was overwhelming. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to do it.

What did I really need to do? I needed to start.

That’s all. Just…start.

So, (finally) that’s what I’ve done. I started by outlining what I had, and that’s showing me where I need to go. It turns out everything I need is mostly there anyway, there’s just a few vital pieces missing.

The point is, I’ve started. Now I have some momentum going, but it’s only because I (finally) started.

There’s power in making a start. Taking one step makes it easier to take the next one. It can be hard to overcome the inertia, but we have to do it. We eat an elephant one bite at a time, but if we never open our mouth to take the first bite, the elephant isn’t going to get et.

So if you have something you’ve been putting off, start. That’s all. Just…start. Because you can’t finish it if you never take the first step.

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!  Begin it now.

W. H. Murray
The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

I am single.

I work.

I write.

Ergo – I have no time.

I love writing, I have to work, and I’m actually quite happy to be single, to tell you the truth.  But they each do tend to produce their own difficulties.  And managing them all together can be somewhat…challenging.

Here’s the thing – if you’re single and live alone, everything that needs to be done has to be done by, well, you.  I mean, I can tell the cats to take out the trash or do the dishes, but they don’t cooperate very well.  Yes, I know I need to put my writing first, but honestly I also need clean underwear.  And I can only live in so much filth before I feel compelled to do something about it.

I read a book by Nora Roberts where the heroine worked all day, took care of a child as a single parent, stayed up all night setting up her own business and cleaning her house AND got involved in a passionate affair.

Right.

Oh – and then there’s the one, another Nora, where the woman is a witch and she cooks, right?  So she gets up at the butt-crack of dawn every morning, sings while she bakes muffins, gets to work by 7:00 am with a full load of (freshly made) food for the day, learns all about magic and witchcraft, AND gets involved in a passionate affair.

Maybe Nora is an insomniac, but this is not happening in my life.

We all have our challenges.  People who want to write or do something else creative and have families (especially young children) probably have it harder than I do.  At least I have a little  control over my schedule.  I know a lot of people who plan to live their lives after the children have moved out.

I’m here to tell you that it won’t be any easier then.  There will always be new excuses, new reasons not to reach for what you want.  And it will always be difficult.

You just have to do it.

So, I’m going to stop whining about my time and get with the program.

But I’m still not singing as I get up early in the morning to bake muffins.