Is This Thing Still On?
Dec. 6th, 2009 09:49 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmerriamIt's not that there has not been things I've wanted to post about, it's that I've been a little overwhelmed lately, struggling for time and focus.
I haven't written anything new since I finished "Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep" (aka The Loon Story). Instead, there has been a lot of rewriting on a couple of novels and a handful of shorter pieces. I've also been working on a pair of synopsis and creating the pitch packets for two very different novels. I also wrote an anthology pitch to a small press publisher for MinnSpec.
I've been having a lot of false starts with new things. I'll get a paragraph or three, and then start to flounder and flail. There a lack of confidence going on that, as a writer, I'm not use to feeling. I'm hoping that I might be about to break past this, since my story fragment folder is starting to fill up with bits and pieces of things, some of which are starting to get inside the back of my head and percolate.
I know that reading slush is affecting my writing, making me hold myself to a higher standard, and I wonder if that's why all the false starts. I've quickly developed a sense of what works in a story (well, at least in a story for our magazine), especially at the beginning, when a writer has those first couple of paragraphs to hook me. I'm seeing where my own work has failed.
I'm also trying to figure out where am I as a writer. I'm still, after seven years of hard work, searching for my own unique style and voice. There are themes that run through almost everything I write, mostly about lonely, chipped up people trying to find their way through or place in life, and I've started to really focus on disabled characters who just are. They're not there to be a plot point, to be healed or fix, they're just characters in the story. But from a style and prose point of view, I've been reading all these lovely stories where the prose leaps off the page (or screen), pulling you along with its poetic beauty while not getting in the way of the story, and oh, how I wish I could do that.
But I can't. My writer brain doesn't work like that. And it's not that there is anything wrong with my style: it's clean, straightforward, and uncluttered. A bare-bones style that hides behind the story even as it drives it along. My writing style is an awful lot like me, in fact. Straightforward, what you see is what you get, gets the job done quietly and efficiently. Utilitarian and competent, that's me.
There is also a lot of transitioning going on in mine and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
careswen's lives right now, the kind of things that take time and focus and are scary and thrilling. careswen is making the switch from "having a job" to "creating a career" while finishing up with graduate school. I've begun trying to find more work in non-fiction and other areas. Both of us are trying to move away from working for corporations and companies to working freelance and for our own small business. Like I said, it's a scary and thrilling time.
So I'm trying to find more copywriting work. The current freelance work I have in this field kind of fell into my lap, but I'm pretty good at it and it pays better than fiction. I'm not sure how to go out and market myself, but I need to figure it out. I also did accessibility testing for a website this year, checking to make sure various pages, links, forms and such worked in JAWS for Windows and other programs. Again, this kind of fell into my lap, but I think there could be a market for this as well. After the first of the year, I plan to focus on finding more work like this.
In my personal life, I'm feeling stressed about the upcoming cataract surgery, and now I need to have dental surgery as well (I broke a tooth, and it's next to a spot where I lost a tooth, so I really need a crown and bridge). At a time when we are trying to tighten our belts a bit, this is going to be a major expense, even with insurance. I've also been frustrated that, despite a change in diet for the better and increased exercise, I'm still at an unhealthy weight. People, I'm working so hard at this and getting nowhere. And I'm frustrated with myself that I'm not practicing enough with the bass and I really wish the Reverend would stop being sick all the time, and I know I should just shut up and stop whining, because most of my flist has it worse right now, so yeah. I'll shut up now.
After the New Year, I'm going to refocus and work harder on time management. I’d start now, but with all the holiday travel and medical stuff coming up, I barely have a chance to breathe, never mind start something new.
I haven't written anything new since I finished "Should We Drown in Feathered Sleep" (aka The Loon Story). Instead, there has been a lot of rewriting on a couple of novels and a handful of shorter pieces. I've also been working on a pair of synopsis and creating the pitch packets for two very different novels. I also wrote an anthology pitch to a small press publisher for MinnSpec.
I've been having a lot of false starts with new things. I'll get a paragraph or three, and then start to flounder and flail. There a lack of confidence going on that, as a writer, I'm not use to feeling. I'm hoping that I might be about to break past this, since my story fragment folder is starting to fill up with bits and pieces of things, some of which are starting to get inside the back of my head and percolate.
I know that reading slush is affecting my writing, making me hold myself to a higher standard, and I wonder if that's why all the false starts. I've quickly developed a sense of what works in a story (well, at least in a story for our magazine), especially at the beginning, when a writer has those first couple of paragraphs to hook me. I'm seeing where my own work has failed.
I'm also trying to figure out where am I as a writer. I'm still, after seven years of hard work, searching for my own unique style and voice. There are themes that run through almost everything I write, mostly about lonely, chipped up people trying to find their way through or place in life, and I've started to really focus on disabled characters who just are. They're not there to be a plot point, to be healed or fix, they're just characters in the story. But from a style and prose point of view, I've been reading all these lovely stories where the prose leaps off the page (or screen), pulling you along with its poetic beauty while not getting in the way of the story, and oh, how I wish I could do that.
But I can't. My writer brain doesn't work like that. And it's not that there is anything wrong with my style: it's clean, straightforward, and uncluttered. A bare-bones style that hides behind the story even as it drives it along. My writing style is an awful lot like me, in fact. Straightforward, what you see is what you get, gets the job done quietly and efficiently. Utilitarian and competent, that's me.
There is also a lot of transitioning going on in mine and
careswen's lives right now, the kind of things that take time and focus and are scary and thrilling. careswen is making the switch from "having a job" to "creating a career" while finishing up with graduate school. I've begun trying to find more work in non-fiction and other areas. Both of us are trying to move away from working for corporations and companies to working freelance and for our own small business. Like I said, it's a scary and thrilling time.So I'm trying to find more copywriting work. The current freelance work I have in this field kind of fell into my lap, but I'm pretty good at it and it pays better than fiction. I'm not sure how to go out and market myself, but I need to figure it out. I also did accessibility testing for a website this year, checking to make sure various pages, links, forms and such worked in JAWS for Windows and other programs. Again, this kind of fell into my lap, but I think there could be a market for this as well. After the first of the year, I plan to focus on finding more work like this.
In my personal life, I'm feeling stressed about the upcoming cataract surgery, and now I need to have dental surgery as well (I broke a tooth, and it's next to a spot where I lost a tooth, so I really need a crown and bridge). At a time when we are trying to tighten our belts a bit, this is going to be a major expense, even with insurance. I've also been frustrated that, despite a change in diet for the better and increased exercise, I'm still at an unhealthy weight. People, I'm working so hard at this and getting nowhere. And I'm frustrated with myself that I'm not practicing enough with the bass and I really wish the Reverend would stop being sick all the time, and I know I should just shut up and stop whining, because most of my flist has it worse right now, so yeah. I'll shut up now.
After the New Year, I'm going to refocus and work harder on time management. I’d start now, but with all the holiday travel and medical stuff coming up, I barely have a chance to breathe, never mind start something new.
