“It’s a very slow process – two steps forward, one step back – but I’m inching in the right direction.”
Rob Reiner
Riding the Rollercoaster
Life is a rollercoaster: one moment you’re soaring with elation and the next moment you’re hurking up your guts.
Life has been very rollercoastery for me of late – roaring up the incline with sparkly new ideas for my WIP, and then plummeting down in despair as I realise I don’t have the physical or emotional resources to do it justice (or do it at all) while I’m working full time at the DDJ.
At least this week, and when you’re tired and stressed and over-emotional, what other week is there?
At times like this, a sturdy support structure is essential. (Rollercoaster without supports? BAD.) Enter the Caped Gooseberry, my personal live-in hero. (Silhouette has been edited to protect his identity.)
Progress is slow – very slow – and emotional outbreaks of self-doubt, -disdain and -despair still occur. But little by little I keep moving. I am not writing 2,500 words a week. Maybe I will again in time, but right now 500 a week would be heartening. I’m holding my goals lightly.
This is also an important time to read encouraging and revitalising advice. Kristen Lamb is one of my favourites for a boost when I’m depressed about my lack of progress, combining as she does reassurance and a swift kick in the pants.
I’ve also recently re-read this helpful dollop of advice from Chuck Wendig (be warned: self-confessed NSFW), which I found via A Cat of Impossible Colour.
Highlights for me include Stop Running Away (why do I do that??), Stop Worrying, Stop Thinking It Should Be Easier (but why is it so hard?), Stop Deprioritizing Your Wordsmithy (closely related to Stop Running Away) and of course Stop the Moping, Whining, Blaming, Lamenting and Being Afraid.
I don’t know that I agree with Wendig about Stop Dreaming, but at least I am sufficiently in touch with reality (I visit alternate weekends) not to start “Epic 23-book fantasy cycles!”
So if the contents of your peritoneum are the only thing moving upward as the rest of your life shoots down, take courage. You aren’t the only one in the rollercoaster car. Tighten your grip, scream if it helps, and hold on til the track turns upward.
Zombie Rising
And we are not talking about those lovable Chocolate Zombies, either.
At least one of you has noticed the lack of posts of late; I am sorry to inform you that this is because I have become a zombie. However I am seeing the doctor shortly and I hope there is a cure.
I had last week off the DDJ, and oh, the plans I had. Yes, I needed to reconstruct everything after the crisis, but it was going to be fun. I was going to have time. I could live like a writer, at least for a week! The bells pealed, the angels sang, and I wrote about a thousand words of notes on the reincarnation of my WIP.
And then…
You guessed it. I got sick. At the worst, I had a high fever and couldn’t even bear to read (i.e. was at death’s door, as precious little else will stop me reading).
Once all my leave was up I went back to the DDJ, thinking I was getting better. But after only a day and a half I had to go home sick again. The cough, the cold…
On the plus side, this means I am not at the DDJ and can even squeeze in a little writing here and there.
On the downside, I now have less than three days of sick leave to last me til mid 2014. (Guess I’d better not get sick again. ) I also have the brain of a zombie – all greyish green gook and slow synapses.
On the plus side again, I also have a Hollow-Cheeked Writer’s Cough which is definitely giving me the appropriate garret look.
What I really need to do now (aside from see the doctor for a zombie-cure, obvs.) is start writing the new draft. Just a line. Because until that first line is down, there’s the spectre of Perfectionism hanging over me.
And that’s scarier than any zombie.