Creative Floods, Depresso Bull$()!+, and Life Stuffs

Guys, these last two months have been a horrible, fantastic mess. On the bright side, I finished the first draft of WILD TYPE and couldn't be happier with how it turned out. I have loved this book for so long now and when I hit the end of this draft I was on cloud nine!


Then, I crashed into depression-ville and actually sat around completely bored, hollow, in a paralyzing funk with no sense of direction, and wanted and did cry about stupid things. As these things go, I told as few people as possible for as long as possible until it just felt damn obvious that Margie was struggling to fake the smiles. I'm a self-isolator. I know that. Let's not discuss it.


After that, as I started with my usual coping strategy (complete with obsessing about whether or not the black cloud will ever leave and if I'm permanently broken), fresh ideas sprung forward. The creative flood occurred. (This flood I occasionally get may be the ONLY upside to chemical imbalance. [See how I didn't say it was me, but a chemical imbalance? Now there's a coping strategy for you.])


As for this flood, I now have a list of no less than five other books I think have potential and another string of six or seven titles I think I could use as short stories which read independently but could be linked together. These are the things I love--when the flood is pulling me along rather than under. Granted, then comes the issues of being in too deep, thinking about stories and characters too much, but that's a topic for another day.


All in all, I've learned to ride out the depressive rip currents as well as the creative floods. They are a pair and I can't seem to have one without the other. On the bright side, however, I can see so much potential for wonderment and magic in these new story ideas that it fuels me to work harder. I know this blog can get stale if I only talk about writing, but in all honestly, that's basically what I do. The day to day stuff I can tweet, the meat and potatoes is saved for you. You're welcome?


Sometimes, I struggle in life. I wonder what I should share and what I should hide. I also struggle with what this blog is from time to time and how I want it to be, what I want it to be. Above all else, I believe it should be honest and I will always approach it with honesty. In no way do I want pity or even sympathy for talking about my depressions. I hate it when other people do it since there's really nothing to say in return, but by God, if I don't bring it up, no one would know and that's where that monster lives: in the space where no one else can see it.


My writing I can hide behind, show you a world so you'll look the other way, but I don't want anything, including depression, hiding within me. There's more room for creative floods when the light is bright and there are no dark corners.

So We Press On

I've been both exhausted and revived by writing lately. Luckily, the stories that are coming from this work will hopefully, one day, be a source of total enjoyment for others. Not only am I in deep with edits on The Unruly (sequel to The Flame Wars), but also I'm plotting the third book in the trilogy and two other books entirely (shh, these are secret books you know nothing about). All of this creative energy gets very muddy sometimes since my eagerness is bigger than the amount of time I can spend on these things. I literally have four different notebooks going right now to catch any ideas I have for each of these tales as they come.

I think about my characters always. In the shower, in the car, at work (sorry, Terry), and even when I'm playing games with the kiddo. I can't not think about them. This mental work tires me, and yet, I can't have it any other way. If I back off to "get a break" it's as though a jar of marbles just smashed on the floor and I spend the next "writing day" trying to find all the loose pieces to recover ground.

I can't say I have a writing process as much as a writing lifestyle. Finding the magic, losing the magic, refinding the magic. It happens in cycles, but they are familiar cycles. (There is no angelic muse on my shoulder, mind you. Just me.)

And then there are times when I get discouraged.

Times when confidence flutters in the breeze because it's not anchored to anything. Times when I don't feel appreciated, or times when I do but I don't believe what people are telling me. And there are times when, for no good reason, I just don't know that anyone cares about my work--the hours spent writing that they don't see. (That is the biggest issue with the writing profession, I believe.) And times when depression creeps in and all my characters whom I spend every day with go silent.


" . . . "


In those days/weeks, there's this other thing I try to remember. My [good] warlocks' motto is, "We press on." I think that's key in anything you do whether it's writing, art, relationships, horrible-awful-no-good days, parenting, having a career, anything. We must press on. Always. Push yourself to be better than you are today in whatever measure of progress you need. The world will wait for you simply because that's what it was made for--you. Then you go and make it what you need it to be. Press on.

This Crazy Hectic Life

Believe it or not, I wrote an entire post for you about 2013. I spilled my guts, stated my goals in writing and life, and sounded really optimistic. And then that post sat there in the "draft" stage for nearly two weeks and I never posted it. Why? I don't know. I really don't. Maybe because I don't have any mountain moving things to say, or because my goals sound like those of other writers out there: query agents, edit, write. It's not that this aspect of my life is bland, it's just that the whole post started to read like my laundry list, and you really deserve better from me than reading my laundry list.

That list is for me to check things off from, not for you to go, "oh look who posted, and what drabby-shabby information she shared."

 

Basically, if I had to sum up in a word how my life is going right now, I'd say things are simple and straightforward. There's three words actually. Sure, I struggled with depression over the holidays and will continue to (I've blogged about depression before), but things aren't horrible and I know they'll improve.

 

But if I step back even a few feet from my mediation and my obsessive nature about being near my laptop, my life is more like this crazy juggling act that involves flaming knives and maybe a few cats.

 

As of right now I'm editing Burning Spirit (teaser on that here). So far Burning has been all the way through my critique and I'm planning to spend the next seven months cleaning it up real nice like. You read that right. The groundhog saw his shadow, seven more months of edits. 

 

I'm also two-thirds done with writing the first draft of Darkened Sky, the sequel to Burning Spirit. This is where my brain lives right now. When I'm sitting at work, I'm thinking of Elsbeth. When I'm cooking dinner, my mind is deep in a cave spending time with warlocks. When I'm in the shower, you guessed it, I went to work with conditioner in my hair because these characters took over my mind.

 

Add all of that work to my day job, which I enjoy, and being a wife and mother, which I also wouldn't trade for anything that isn't dark chocolate, and my schedule was definitely too full when our car broke down for two weeks. Stress, yes. How life goes, yes.

 

I guess the real point of this post then is to say, yeah, it's a crazy, hectic life--we should enjoy it while we have it. If I quit writing, my heart would feel like something's missing, so I'd rather have the crazy any day than sit on the sidelines and watch it all go by.

 

 

How are you holding up in 2013? Leave comments below.

Writing in the Shadow of Depression

I'm going to be brutally honest right now, and not just because I have "something to say," but because I think this needs to be shared aloud.

Last week was pretty shitty for me. I had a bazillion deadlines. I was a giant grouch with a worry addiction. I lost sleep, my appetite, and my sense of self. I went through the wringer and it sucked, plain and simple, suckola, suckaroo, blah, blah, blah. I kept all of this between myself, my husband, and my sister.

I don't want sympathy, a shoulder, or even a lying consolation saying everything is okay.

Don't give me those things.

As writers we have these weeks. They come. They go.

I'm a writer who knows I have suffered in the past (and probably will suffer in the future) with clinical severe depression brought on from traumatic experiences I'll probably never share publicly. Depression is...well...depression. I can recognize that beast's shadow and I can see him coming from a mile away.