Home Posts tagged "missing: one muse"

Tag: missing: one muse

The Nano That Wasn’t

So last month, I talked about participating in NanoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) with two books, alternating or working on whatever book I felt like working on. And at the time, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable, doable plan. Especially since I wasn’t planning on trying to make the usual 50,000-word goal. And then November actually hit. For the first half of the month, I had a lot going on with work, which is fine — I never complain about money coming in — and I figured, okay, this first half is a wash. Maybe I can just do Nano for the second half then. I’m chuckling to myself because it’s the 21st, 9 days from the end of the month, and I have yet to write a single word. I haven’t even written a poem. Nada. Nothing. So what the heck happened? Life happened. Life. Life stress. Health stress — nothing serious, but just enough to cause some…fun motivation issues. Chronic extreme fatigue being one. I’m still battling that. The holidays are approaching, which are their own unique brand of stress. Things are imploding. The thought is there, but every time I think about actually, you know, actually writing, my muse side-eyes me and says, Seriously? In the middle of this freaking mess? Have you lost it? And I sigh and set the thought aside yet again. It’s pretty awful, because my main way of dealing with stress is…you guessed it…writing. And I haven’t consistently written for years now.…

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When the Muse Wakes Up

So it’s been a month and four days since Hailey’s passing, and we’re still grieving. We’re adjusting, little by little. I’ve been working a lot and trying to write, as I always do when I’m coping with something I’m hurting over. But this time…it’s like my muse suddenly woke up from a long slumber. Or, I just got tired of not writing. One of those two. Or both. And there is so much I am trying to do now, it’s not even funny: ~Poetry submissions to contests and literary magazines (online), often requiring revisions to existing poems or writing new ones, as they usually don’t accept poems published on social media (and most of my newer stuff is on Instagram). ~My short story for the TDP anthology, theoretically due next month, on its third rewrite. I scrapped what I was doing, rethought it, pulled Tarot cards on some things, and wrote 3,000 words on it already. Most I’ve written on one project all year. What?! It also spawned a SERIES IDEA which I am contemplating. ~Thinking about my poetry chapbook, Eterne (Esperanto for “Eternally”) — I wasn’t planning on publishing any more chapbooks, buuuuut I have so many new poems that it just makes sense. Already bought a premade cover. Just need to, write more, organize it, all that stuff. ~My Radish erotic contemporary romance — experiment to see how that goes (it’s a serial website similar to Kindle Vella) and how writing contemporary romance works for me. I’m about…

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Bringing the Fun Back

So I was scrolling through my Facebook feed and stumbled across this: Sweet-Ass Affirmations 2 / A Card Deck for Creative Maniacs . Of course I was intrigued. I followed the link, and discovered something truly awesome. It’s an affirmation deck, which is cool. Now I don’t currently own any, nor have I really delved into them before, but hey, there’s a first time for everything. But what got my muse all a-flutter was the idea of fun and play and creative and mania and bringing out the joy in life – because, c’mon now, we all need that, but for me, I’ve been thinking about this VERY THING. It’s like the Universe is giving me a gentle nudge. Synchronicity. Because I was just thinking that I needed to make my writing fun again. I’ve been struggling for weeks on my novella. I’m in the process of loosely plotting it, building a bit of a roadmap to follow, as is my process, and I’ve found myself horribly stuck. The idea was exciting and interesting and fun months ago when I thought of it. Now? It just feels like work. It could be that everything these days feels like work. Work’s been crazy, my sleep is still not right, I haven’t been feeling good about anything, the pandemic has been getting me down (we’re still not out of the woods, but that’s another post), and I just feel very….hopeless? Pointless? Crappy? Right now. I can’t even put my finger on it,…

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Writing Again!

So a few days ago, I started writing again for the first time in SIX MONTHS. Yes, my friends, six months. It’s the longest time I ever went without writing since 2003, I estimate, because that’s when I started writing every day. I’ve had pockets of time where I stopped, or had to stop, like when I finished the revision of Fey Touched in 2012 and was brain dead for two months, or when the trigeminal neuralgia flared for the first time in my left eye and I quit the computer for three months, thinking it was my heavy computer usage (spoiler alert: it wasn’t). But never, ever have I went six months without a word of fiction. I have written poems here and there, so words were written — just not fiction words. Why on earth would I do such a thing, you ask? Why put myself through such torture? And yes, it was absolute torture. I don’t recommend it at all. There were a few things going on. One, I simply didn’t have the time. Sounds lame, because who doesn’t have time to write, but it’s absolutely true. With my health being sucky and my energy being low, and every minute I felt okay devoted to work, there just wasn’t any leftover spoons for writing — except poetry. I was battling a sleep disorder and head pain as well, so those things just made it worse. I was still stressed from the pandemic. Things are getting better overall,…

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