Particularities and Perseverence

I wanna go back to sleep SO bad!

On Friday I wrote that I was seeking something in my life, and I wondered what this meant for my fiction. I didn’t mean that I was going to quit. I meant that I need to branch out and explore other areas of my being-ness. I’ve had one egg (fiction)  in my basket for quite awhile now.

However, that said, today I promised myself I’d start writing on yet another new novel idea. Last fall I started a thriller, took a workshop, and lost interest in the story. Hard-core thrillers aren’t my thing, that’s all. But I wanted to check out that kind of storytelling, and I’m glad I did.

Now, it’s time to start again. I’ve muddled a new idea, and, of course, I’m unsure about it. Over the weekend, I realized — RE-realized I should say — that after awhile I tie myself in knots with too much thinking. I’m better in the doing. The only way to know whether I’m emotionally invested is to write the first 50 pages fast, which is to say, with minimal angst.

Being a detail-oriented person, I find it’s the particularites set down on the page that get me excited. The grand story vision is an untested theory, that’s all. So I’ll see what I see after 50 pages.

I’m sitting up in bed with coffee, laptop, index cards, and novel journal (plus cat) at my side. Please wish me luck: I’m exhausted and anxious. I haven’t been sleeping well because of money stress. That’s why I’m still in bed; sitting at my desk to write would take too much energy. This, my friends, is perseverence in action!

While I Wasn’t Looking

Spring happened while I wasn’t looking. All of sudden daffodils are blooming and trees are frothing. I vaguely recall a check-out clerk lauding the first day of spring (finally! but when was that?) and a sign-up for spring softball/baseball sign-ups. Our days sprang forward and I’m still catching up.

spring

Yesterday, a good friend sent me this note: You’ve been MIA. Everything okay with you? That was enough to stop me in my tracks for an internal check. Am I okay?

Sure, I’m okay, but I’m not thriving to go along with this season of blooms. I’ve been too busy and anxious throughout March. So, I thought I’d take a TIME OUT (yes, capped) to blog after my unintentional blog-pause.

1. Gray roots. I’m prematurely gray (since my early 20s, in fact) and my gray roots are an inch-and-a-half long at the moment. Those are the kind of roots I’d prefer not to see, especially when they’re practically yelling at me to stop with the crazy obsessiveness and pay attention to myself already.

2. Earning the moulah. Thought I had this handled, but then the project I’m on took a turn for the outrageous. I’m talking rolling deadlines and unanticipated extra requirements and, oh I don’t know. Not worth describing the details. I suppose I’m still getting used to this gig, is all, and the high-learning curve adds stress to any already hectic deadline schedule.

3. Finishing the manuscript. But maybe, just maybe, I wouldn’t have stressed out about the project if I hadn’t first obsessed about sending the completed manuscript to Nice Agent before the outrageous turn occured. (I knew it was due — the project is that schedule-ized.) So I worked night-and-day, even procrastinated the project by a few days, which meant that I then I had to switch over night-and-day for that, and I didn’t get the manuscript finished anyhow, and I was disappointed, and then I got so exhausted that I cried, threw a tantrum, and gave myself an almost-migraine earlier this week.

4. Submitting a short story. And then on top of it all, just to add to the grinding pressure, I’d so wanted to revise the bench short story, really shine it up, for a March 31st submission deadline. Hah! I say double Hah! to that. Yet, I tried to squeeze it in, and then other night I was awake at 3:00 a.m. with a Lisa-freak-out. So, no go with the story for now, and I’m disappointed yet again. I’d so wanted, longed, to submit a short story to an annual anthology called Voicecatcher, which is a local women writer’s community effort — to be part of a community, you know? Now I have to wait a year.

The upshot of all this, the reason I’m only “okay” is that I don’t feel like much of a fictionista right now — I let myself down in that department. I feel like a work-drone, is all. This will pass, I know, but you might be wondering why I haven’t blogged much. When I’m in happy-fiction-land, I tend to blog more often, it seems.

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Just paused within my blogger TIME OUT to coat my gray roots with Preference dark brown hair dye. This is a step in the right direction, anyhow. Taking care of the small stuff leads to taking care of the big stuff. And, I’ll just feel better without my Cruella deVille gray streak.