“The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore” Monday, October 29, 2012

I’ve decided that today is as good as day as any to update since, if I don’t update when I’ve got the thought to do it, I’ll never do it all. The title comes from the Cher song of the same name. I don’t actually have that song on any iDevice I own, but it features in an episode of The X-Files and I’ve just watched a good episode of X-Files (not that one), so that’s likely why it’s stuck in my head at the moment. The fact that this Hurricane Sandy is dooming my area with grey for the rest of the week is likely a coincidence.

I think I should mention NaNoWriMo as it’s just around the corner and I consider myself to be a writer. Part of so-called gloom throughout the majority of this month was due to my desire to have my novel completely edited and ready to send on the 1st of October so that it could be on someone’s desk or at least their trash bin before NaNoWriMo began.

I’ve been following this industry for a long while and if there’s anything I’ve learned it’s that NaNoWriMo can be rather undesirable for agents and editors. What often happens every November is that people who perhaps have always wanted to write a novel or folks who had never even considered it are inundated with cheers from peers pressing them to write 50K words in one month. The way NaNoWriMo SHOULD work is to force a person to write every day for 30 days, planning for a total of 50k before the month’s end, and then use the product from 30 November to begin crafting a real novel over the course of another year or so. This way, one has a real novel to present to an agent, thus beginning their career and so forth.

What ends up happening, however, is that folks write every day for 30 days, hit their 50k mark and then, with perhaps a quick Microsoft Word spell check, they send whatever they’ve crafted in 30 days to every agent in the world and are somehow surprised when nothing comes from their efforts.

While the above doesn’t truly concern me since I’m writing my fourth novel and I know, for certain, a final product is not really possible to note, draft, complete, cut and edit in 30 days, what is a devastating concern for me is that since so many of NaNoWriMo submissions get sent out between December and February, a real writing effort could get easily lost in the pile. So, if I finish off this four-year effort and send it off now, my chances for being noticed are tissue-paper thin all because of NaNoWriMo.

All this notwithstanding, I’ve decided to participate in NaNoWriMo this year, but I’ll be using this as more of a writing exercise than an attempt at a real novel. I’m not even going to think about a topic until the 1st of the month so that I can push together whatever can, missing words, plot holes and all, in 30 days.

I’m no longer in a slump of missing my given “due date,” but I’ve not been able to push myself into daily writing yet, so my goal with NaNoWriMo, as much as I detest it and as much as I like to blame it for everything from Hurricane Sandy to poor American voting decisions, will be to just get myself writing again.

Advertisement

Thankful Tuesday, October 16, 2012

I’m so very thankful for today!

I’ve been in such a slump for so many weeks it got difficult to sort out the good days from the bad, but today, I am uplifted for the first time in a long while.

I got a promotion at first-job, but that’s not what actually pulled me from the slump. This started yesterday as I finally took to heart the saying “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting.” and made a change. I cleaned the house and resolved to be patient because whatever God had cooking for was only going to materialize on His time and never mine.

I was already feeling good about what I’d just come through when I got the call offering my promotion, so that was just the proverbial icing on the cake. I even got some writing done today!

I’m just so thankful that God breaks me down to build me back up even stronger, since that’s always been His way. It’s not until the sky looks darkest that the light starts to shine. Even though all my friends and family have been saying how they’ve prayed for this promotion for me, I remind myself that the promotion in itself is not really what makes today so special. Today was special because I was happy with my lot in life; happy to be patient, happy to recognize that limits aren’t necessarily bad and happy to know that I struggle for God’s greater glory in the end.

Today, I’m very, very thankful.

Limits

I’ve not written anything here in more than a month and while most of it has been due to not really having anything to say, there is still a part of it that has toed the line of mild depression for the past month. I can safely say “mild” because without the aid of a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, the last month+ would have gone far worse, so I’m comfortable with the word “mild.”

Really, I’ve just been avoiding all that could be avoided without the loss of first-job in an effort to prevent myself from recognizing my limitations.

I’m getting to I’ve come to a point in my life where every door is not open to me every day and the world is no longer as full of as many possibilities. It’s possible for me to have a goal and strive through the better part of a year toward that goal, but still not meet it in the timeframe I’ve set for myself. It’s possible for me to fail.

I’m unaccustomed to failure. Typically, I excel at whatever project I have and I’ve lost interest and moved onto a new project long before I have a chance to set out long-term goals and see them come to fruition, so failing at a project is new and abhorrent to me.

I know the old adages: I only fail if I fail to get back up again…I’m only beaten if I say I’m beaten…etc., so I know that my inability to meet my timeframe goal is not a death sentence and it doesn’t mean I’ll never get there, but it’s still a failure to achieve something, which means that I actually have limits.

It’s taken me 28 years to come to this realization and I’ll admit that it’s ugly; it tastes like bile, looks like muck, feels like death, ugly.

So…my creation, project, whatever won’t be done on my time table. To say that I’m disappointed is an understatement, but I can at least walk away from this experience recognizing that I have some limits and that is perfectly okay.