SquarePeg Books

Wow. December. The year is already gone.

I’m not sure what I accomplished this past year. I progressed a bit on my writing, banging out a rough draft romance novel, tightened up Book 3 volume 1 of the fantasy series (Book 3 is going to kill me, I swear. I knew it was going to be big because war is, but… damn!), but I wouldn’t call it finished. More logical, but not finished. I’m working on finding the strands for Book 3 volume 2 of the same. I tried to figure out a plan of attack for 2020. although as we all know, no plan ever survives contact with the enemy.

I’ve tried to address this month’s question – Let’s play a game. Imagine. Role-play. How would you describe your future writer self, your life and what it looks and feels like if you were living the dream? Or if you are already there, what does it look and feel like? Tell the rest of us. What would you change or improve?

-but its hard for me to look at things like that right now.

I want to say that after I publish, Neil Gaiman and I are good friends,  talking at conferences, exchanging friendly conversation in the hotel bar. Stephen King and I bitch about investment advisors, and he invites me to his house for a Halloween party. Kristine Kathryn Rusch and I dip our heads close in together as we try to puzzle out what, exactly, would be a good plan of attack for licensing what from our businesses, bouncing ideas off each other.

But it’s hard to look at things in such a grandiose way, especially when you feel like you’ve been sucker punched a few times (And while the other stuff might be possible,(if I could keep myself from fan-girling all over Gaiman and Rusch) realistically, I don’t think I could score an invite to Stephen King’s Halloween party (but it would be awesome).).

The end-game of finally publishing because I have a complete series to consistently push out a book once a year looks far off and frighteningly unrealistic.  Writing is more like slogging through hip deep mud, right now. It’s hard to stay motivated when everyone around you isn’t quite so, when it comes to your goals.

It could be the season and the screeching media and the fact that life generally has been rougher than I like, lately. It could be I’m just fantastically worn out, which wouldn’t be a lie.  It could be a lot of things.

But the best I can do is try to plug away at the words, a little bit each day.

Which is probably what I would have to do anyway, once my fame and income shamed the likes of Richard Castle.

Check out the Insecure Writer’s Support Group to see more writers dish about their concerns, their solutions to various problems, or just general atelophobia.