Good Monday morning on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day! Yes, I must apologize for my long absence. The holidays came and went. I gave away the only present I received this past Christmas. (A little detour into crybaby land there.) December is usually a tough month for many people and I am no different. The short days tend to get us down as the winter solstice approaches and some of us have one of those days in the month too. Not just a run of the mill bad day, but an anniversary such as Tolkien wrote about in The Lord of the Rings. Frodo Baggins had a couple of days that tended to haunt him each year. I didn't understand this until life laid a couple of 'em on me. December 4th is the anniversary of a bad auto accident and at that time each year I tend to get depressed more easily than at other times. You probably have days or times like that too. If not, praise God!
Back to the self-publishing experience. Last week, the cover art was completed... and I haven't brought myself to look at it yet. Part of the reason for that is that I have not done my part in rewriting the novel yet. I have gone through another period of what Twain called 'having nothing in the tank'. Whether this comes from the post traumatic stress or from God's own timing I don't know, but I do tend to get impatient and frustrated with it. Now the middle of January is here and I hope and pray that it is time to get underway once more.
Of course, when I began this new path in life, I would not be subject to the career hazards of writers. You know, the writer's block, the down times, and others. I would crank out book after book, dominate the bestseller lists, and just generally be above all the things that other authors have to contend with. You can see the fall coming in that one a mile off! Yep, I have proved to be a human writer just like every other. There are times when I despair of publishing anything at all. Times when I am ready to write and times when nothing comes. Times when I trust in God, and the times when I want to shout, "Hey, are you up there? Remember me!" I know that writing takes practice, but days may pass with only reading and no writing accomplished. Is that my fault? Perhaps not, it may be that times such as these are simply part of the process of moving from one season in life to a totally different and new season. I worked for nearly twenty years in a big corporation where assignments and duties were given to me, deadlines were set by higher authority, and I was not the one calling the shots. Now I have the freedom of the self-employed writer... and the pitfalls as well.
Learning a new life is never easy. Things from the old life cling. Some need to be let go. Believe it or don't, I tried to use project management early on in this writing thing. Plan a schedule, stick to it, draft the charts, estimate the times, and all that crap. Phoo, none of that worked. I hated the project management stuff in my old job; so I drug it with me to inflict on myself in this new one. Every time I say or think that I want to have thus and such done by this date it is like turning off a switch. Like a recovering alcoholic, I have found that I just need to pray and then take it one day at a time. Interesting comparison there, but perhaps not so far off the mark. Coming out of Corporameia or Cubeville, to use the Dilbert term, requires a recovery period like, say, the rest of your life. I remember even today the dread of Monday morning that started on Sunday afternoon. I can't believe how long I worked under that stress too! Now when things get tough the temptation is to go back? Yikes!
Lest this be all about bad news, I did start an experiment before Christmas to work out six days per week. The experimental part is to see if this will help in writing. Certainly it will help my health in general. I'm no Tebow. He is a young and fit athlete; I am no longer young, haven't been fit for a while, and could never claim to be an athlete. However, I use an ad-libed step workout with a small ladder and a step. A couple episodes of Home Improvement are used to set a workout length and to take my mind off the dreadful boredom of exercising alone in the basement. While it's not exactly Pilates, I think the workout has done wonders for me already. I can't speak to the writing effects yet, the jury is still out on that one. Let me take a look at that book cover...
Yours in Christ,Bucky
