Back in the Saddle

At long last, I am getting back into the language of Victorian England and putting words on the screen. That's a good feeling, especially when I have been slogging for so long, unable to get through the horse latitudes of ending one project and getting back to another. It takes time to get into the right frame of mind and the cadence of language from a different era, but I'm finally there with another chapter down. It's a bit rough in spots, but that is what editing and polishing are for -- working out the rough spots.

I've decided to give myself a treat once I've finished with a certain number of pages and chapters, and that is a holiday in another time and place with different characters. They are the carrot on the end of the writing stick. It is important to reward yourself for accomplishing set goals. I may even serialize the novel online, but I'm not quite there yet. Right now is all about getting back into the story and seeing it unfold on the screen, and that is a good feeling.

There are so many different levels to writing, not the least of which is finding a pace that suits the characters and the writer, all the while expecting and dealing with changes in the weather, so to speak. Some days, writing can be like skimming along a smooth track without a care in the world or a cloud on the horizon. Other days, it's more like slogging through mud up to your knees that sucks you down and makes forward movement downright difficult. It's important to keep slogging until you get to smooth ground again or nothing ever gets done.

There are times that other characters and stories beckon and seduce. I do my best to ignore them, taking notes when possible and remembering and noting details for exploration later. Distraction is a form of procrastination and should not be indulged. That's always hard for me to remember since I tend to be a bit of a magpie with new ideas, characters, and bits of research that lead in different directions from the one I'm currently traveling. That's where discipline comes in, but discipline and I have a rocky relationship. Discipline throws rocks to get my attention and I bob and weave and go off track. Like I said, a rocky relationship.

This morning was different. I felt the muse stirring and decided to follow her back into the fray. Now I'm past that awkward part in the story where clues are slipped in and a bit of foreshadowing done, I can move on to the meat of the story, coming back later to smooth out the bumps and brush away the cobwebs that gathered in the months between when I put the story down and picked it up again determined to move through it. It's a little like exercising after being a couch potato long enough for the pops and clicks of unused muscles, and the inevitable ache that settles, makes me wonder why I ever decided that exercise was a good thing.

At any rate, moving ahead is painful at first but gets easier each day -- as long as I minimize distractions and focus on getting some work done. In spite of the fits and starts, it does feel good to be back on track with a specific and reachable goal ahead. No one said writing was easy, but the rewards are worth it, as long as I don't think about the reviewers that will inevitably dislike what I've achieved. It's all right. Everyone is entitled to an opinion -- even when it's wrong.

 

In Death as in Writing

Tough week and it's only Tuesday. That's what happens when the week begins with death. In this case, the death included Osama Bin Laden and my half-brother Timmy. I'm glad Osama is gone (talk about your anti-climax) and have mixed feelings about Timmy. He's been ill for a year and in the hospital for the past three months, most of which I have spent on the phone with our mother. Well, actually she's his mother and my biological mother and aunt. Figure that one out.

Death takes the wind out of my writing sails. They've been as flat as though I was becalmed in the great Sargasso Sea. It's not like I don't know where I'm going in the latest book, I do. I'm having trouble summoning up the requisite literary energy and discipline to dive back into the book, which I put off because I was launching the print version of my latest self-published work. Here it is May already and I'm stalled when I should be finishing up the first draft of my Victorian gothic tale. April showers are supposed to bring May flowers not May stalls and I am definitely stalled.

Now comes the urge to rant about all the things that are keeping me from writing and none of them are valid. It's as transparent as Cuddy's mom's lawsuit and need for a probate lawyer to change her will because Cuddy and House conspired to heal her. It's never about what you think a fight is about and always about the subtext. Another stall. Maybe I should consider a horse or two with all these stalls and, if I were flying a plane, I'd be right about to hit the hard deck really hard.

I can't concentrate. I have too much to do. I have to work and read review books and write the reviews and keep up my blogs and talk to family and pay the bills and all the little excuses I have always had that didn't stop me when I was writing my last novel or the one before. Then I could focus; now, not so much. I think there is something inherently wrong when a fully realized story with great characters, lots of history and a killer plot can't get written -- by me -- at all. I've been stalling on this one for a while and it's not making me feel any less incompetent or like a fraud and more like a failure every day. Isn't that the way, though? As if I needed an excuse to feel like a fraud. I wonder if other writers feel that way?

Letting out the insecurity without a leash is a bad idea, so scratch everything that came before, except for missing Timmy. He was only forty-eight years old and now he is gone. Finally and completely and no take backs gone. He had such a rotten time of it the past few years. No one should have to feel that way, and yet so many people do, and we're back to fraud again.

I can't seem to shake the excuses, and feeling like a fraud is one of those excuses. I should just shut up and write. It's what I did in the past, churning out mediocre stories with faint glimmers of literary goodness. It shouldn't take this long. It shouldn't be this hard. Writing isn't easy. It's hard work and balancing all the demands of the usually full and busy lifestyle and I no longer have the excuse of children taking up my time. At least then I could write. Things are too quiet. The room's too cold. The wind is coming out of the wrong direction. Anything just so I don't have to sit down and face the blank screen, cursing blink-blink-blinking at me, waiting patiently and mechanically for the next word and the one after that and the one after that . . . . That's how it goes. Some days are up and some days are down and most days the writing gets done, not great writing, but words on the page that will eventually morph into something good. At least that is how I hope it will go and hope blinks eternally in that blasted cursor.

I guess you could say I have nothing to write about, at least not here, and I should just buckle down, get up early, put my fingers on the keys and type. It's what I've always done, turning life into art and pain into tragedy and comedy and everything in between. Getting through the hard days is the trick and I'm all out of tricks, so it's back to the keyboard for something real and tangible. The next word and the next sentence and the next paragraph that leads from half-finished to ready for editing and rewriting. That's how the work gets done.

So, for Timmy, who kept telling me how proud he was that his sister was a writer, this one's for you.