Slow

Well, after an illness that lasted almost three weeks I seem to be on the road to recovery....although it might be best to think of it as a muddy, backwoods dirt road. I had been sleeping inordinate amounts of time for a period of about two weeks before the bug finally blossomed into full plague at the same time my inlaws were visiting from Ohio. (Sorry about that Carl and Lu) But now the crud seems to be on the wane, and life totters on.

Needless to say, I haven't been very productive. But I haven't been totally inactive either. I'm finally closing in on what I think are the last couple of thousand words on a novelette I've been struggling through. I hope to finish the rough draft in the next day or two. It's designed to stand on it's own, or be the prologue for a future novel I have an idea for. Once done, I'll let it sit a few days before editing.

Sometimes I think being unproductive can become self reinforcing. I originally stopped writing when I started editing Dead Stop for publication. Then I spent the autumn focused on promoting it any way I could. I knew I needed to get back to writing, but it seems like my brain can be in either promotion mode or writing mode...not both. Something I'm going to have to consider, and somehow deal with in the future. But the thing is, more and more time kept passing without me writing anything, and for some reason that made it even harder to get started again.

I'm hoping that finishing the rough draft of this novelette will get me back on the right track. When I say rough, I do mean rough...it definitely needs some serious going over and editing...but even the small victories matter. Currently it's slated for inclusion in a hazy future anthology that would sort of be a sequel to Shades. Only this one would be about monsters instead of exclusively ghosts. But nothing is set in concrete.

Oh well, that's my update and lesson for the time being....

"WARNING: FALLING OUT OF THE  HABIT OF WRITING IS BAD"

Writer's Block and Vanishing Publishers

Every writer has their own set of weaknesses. I think one of my greatest is my constant self monitoring when it comes to writing. I will sometimes get hung up on a scene, a line, or an idea and it brings the whole project to stop.

Now that’s not always a bad thing. It stopped the writing of Dead Stop until I backed up and went in a different and much better direction. On the other hand, it has held up one novel for about three years. And now it seems to even affect my short story writing. It just seems that when it comes to putting something down on paper that I don’t like, I seize up.

I wasn’t aware of that so much until I saw a quote by a famous TV writer who said that writers block was caused by the fear of bad writing. Apparently his approach is to go ahead and write the bad stuff too, then just don’t use it.

Hmmmm… That’s sort of alien to me, since I tend to edit and revise as I go along.

Oh well, things to think about.

On to sadder tidings….It seems that Pill Hill Press is closing up shop. That is a real shame because Jessy and Alva are good people who worked hard to do right  by their writers. PHP had writer friendly contracts, and they were very adaptable when dealing with the types of situations that can arise when publishing a novel. I wish both Jessy and Alva the very best in the future.