Doing battle with demons

Much as I would like this to be about writing actual warfare with demonic entities, it is alas rather more metaphorical. The demons in question are things that I live with on a day to day basis.

Everyone has their personal demons. For some it's all things alcoholic, for others their health. Life - or perhaps Someone - appears to have gifted creative people with a disproportionate share of personal demons. There's certainly no shortage of musicians, artists or authors with tragic life stories and the kind of self-destructive behavior that usually goes with losing to one's demons.

Mine have been... loud lately. It happens. I can go months, even years, with the medication cocktail keeping everything under control. Then something shifts, shakes my balance a bit, and they're back, whispering their perverse little notions into my mind and trying to convince me that the world would be a better place without me in it.

It's not that bad yet. I've gotten better at recognizing the early warning signs and doing something about it. One of the somethings is - surprise! - splatting to everyone I consider half-way friendly about what's going on, on the grounds that the more I talk it out, the more chance there is something someone says will be the right trigger to chase them off. This time.

I even know what's causing this outbreak - I'm mentally and emotionally worn out. Unfortunately, I'm also not getting any kind of time away until Christmas, when a much-delayed cleanup of the house has to happen. Since the layoffs were announced at the start of the year, there's been no letup in the constant grind of too much to do, not enough time to do it, and everything is more critical than everything else. Add in project scope blowout and a whole bunch of other work stress factories, big and little, and a bunch of family-related stress, and I've run out of me.

The real problem with this, at least as far as the Mad Genius Club is concerned, is that it plays havoc with my writing when this sort of thing hits. I can go weeks without writing anything when an episode hits - or worse, everything I write turns darker-than-dark.

How do you get past these crashes? What - if anything - helps you to dig out of the hole and get back on the level again?

Running on the spot

I feel like I'm running on the spot to stop myself going backwards.

Here I am working another 5 day 12 hour week to get through marking assignments and delivering lectures. Last week end I almost had the first book of the new fantasy trilogy finished. But now I won't get back to it until after next weekend. (I'm a guest at Conquest over the weekend). And in the meantime I'm mulling over ideas for the next King Rolen's Kin trilogy.

What I'd really like is uninterrupted time to write. (See picture) No stress, no pressure. Yet, according to Andrea Kuszewski over at IEET, stress can help trigger creativity. (See the article here)

'When placed in a situation where innovation was necessary, Ernesto said, “People think beyond the normal capabilities of an object, and try to surpass the limitations it imposes upon itself.” In this way, he describes their behavior as Technological Disobedience, or breaking all rules in which that product’s technology was intended (rule-breaking, like I’ve said before, is one of the hallmark traits of creativity).'

So I hope, as my deadline looms closer, while the bathrooms and kitchens get pulled apart and rebuilt around me, and I continue to lecture and mark assignments in a college that teaches an accelerated curriculum, that some of this 'creativity under stress' rubs off on me.

When it all gets too much, I imagine running away to place with a view of the ocean and a room where I can sit with my computer. I make a cup of tea and shut the door on the world and disappear into my head to write. My husband and family are there in the next room. I can go out and join them any time I like. But they don't interrupt me to tell me the cat threw up on the couch again. They just clean it up themselves. Ahhhh, heaven!

What is your 'happy place' that you imagine when things get too much? For me it involves writing. I can't imagine living without writing.

Stop the world I want to get off

We've all heard something like that plenty of times, and most of us have felt that way at least once (In my case, that's once a day, but I'm 'special'). But is it really a good idea to step out of the chaos and become an onlooker?

When you watch, you can see things you'd miss if you were in the middle of the action - but you don't get to feel it. Sometimes that's a hell of a lot easier.

So, right now, I'd like to get off the whirlwind tour of "things in life that suck boulders through coffee stirrers", but - me being a mad writer - there's a part of me that's still observing the emotional roller-coaster ride and taking notes for future writing. But I still want to get off. I'm heading to Australia in a bit less than a week, and I'm exhausted. I need time to step back a little and absorb it all.

Yes, I'm whining. I've had a hell of a time lately, and while I'm sure it's a very valuable experience to know how it feels to hear that your mother has had a stroke, and I'm sure that sensation of my stomach burrowing through the soles of my feet will find its way into my writing somewhere, right now I just want it all to stop.

Meantime - how many of you have wanted to step away from everything for a while? Do you think it's a good thing? A bad thing? Or am I just in meltdown and need to be kicked in the butt and told to get on with it?

Holiday Writing

OK I'm not talking about travel writing, where intrepid backpackers write to Lonely Planet about how the rice-wine is in the bamboo hut accommodation of the Cambodian rain forest. I'm also not talking about the writing you might do when you are on holidays - which for me is usually a combination of describing things I've seen during the day that caught my eye, or scribbling down ideas and other snippets that have popped into my mind.

The sort of holiday I'm thinking about is the sort you get when you change jobs - the 'out of the frying pan into the fire' sort of holiday when people nod knowingly and say - 'Ah, yes. A change is a good as a holiday!'

I've been editing large novel projects for years now, seemingly in an endless loop. Recently I've broken that pattern and written the first three chapters of an Urban Fantasy. Writing something that was completely contemporary was a lot of fun, and I got a chance to describe bits of Brisbane I grew up in as well. But following that I really felt like I needed a break from novels - so I gave myself a holiday. A writing holiday:)

I did not actually go anywhere, what I did was let myself go completely into a fantasy idea that has been floating around for a while. With nothing more than the proverbial smell of an oily idea and no concept where the whole thing was going to end up - I just unleashed myself. It was great fun, and fantastic to let myself get that far mentally into a first draft exercise without scrutinising myself to severely. The project ended up coming in at just under 18,000 words - a supremely unmarketable length! But I love it.

It made me realise how much fun it is to let the brakes off, to let yourself get right into something that is grabbing you by the heart.

It was nice writing holiday. Now that I am back I have to edit it. Damn!

What sort of writing holidays to you give yourself?

Doing the Happy Dance!

Amanda posted about Milestones.

As writers we put in a lot of hours with the occasional Red Letter day few and far between. So when they do come around we get verrrry excited.

Advance copies of KRK book to have arrived. (The Uncrowned King). Here is Sassy cat investigating the books.

AND ... drum roll, my wonderful agent, John Jarrold, has sold my new fantasy series The First T'En to Solaris. Yaaay! They'll be releasing the books in 2012.

The other thing that's got me doing a Big Girl Squee is this:

"The King's Bastard is currently is in the top 20 of the UK's paperback science-fiction and fantasy chart."

See Solaris's full post here.

As fellow writers you all know how many years go into writing a trilogy, how you pour your heart and soul into your work, never sure that the books will ever see the light of day. So you know how thrilling it is to achieve publication.

It is like a big hand reaching down out of the publishing sky to pat you on the head and say 'There, there, you weren't kidding yourself all these years. You really can write!'

To paraphrase a well known advertising campaign. It did not happen overnight. I had written 10 books before I was 25. (Thankfully none of these will ever see the light of day. Blush). And in the last 8 years I must have written another 11 books.

How many completed books do you have sitting on your hard drive?

Insecure Writers Take Heart - you are not alone!

My publisher emailed me the other day to say that advance copies of book one of King Rolen’s Kin had arrived on his desk and they looked terrific. Now any normal person would be dancing on the ceiling with news like this. My first thought was -- Gosh, I’d love to see a copy.

My next thought was -- It is real now. What if no one buys the books?

So why are writers so insecure?

Well, we pour our hearts into our books, then send them out into the world to be savaged by reviewers and placed on a bookshelf where they may never be bought.

We have little or no control over what happens to our ‘babies’.

In the past, in professions where people had little control over things like fishermen at sea or actors on the stage, they tended to be very superstitious. Here’s some info on theatrical superstitions. And here’s some insights into fisherman superstitions. One belief not mentioned on this page was the idea that those persons born with a caul (part of the amniotic sack) over their face, could not drown. My grandfather was born with a caul over his face. His mother put the caul between pages of the family bible and by the time I saw it 80 years later, it had absorbed the printing from the bible. Very spooky. It was like very fine vellum, and you could see through it.

According to Nathan Bransford, if you lack confidence in your writing, it might not be a bad thing. He quotes the Dunning-Kruger effect.

‘The basic theory is that when people are incompetent at something they tend to lack the ability to realize it and they overrate their abilities relative to others. Meanwhile, people who actually are good at something tend to underrate their abilities and may as a result suffer from lack of confidence.’

Which doesn’t surprise me, because the more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know. Which might be why I feel insecure ...

Here is a post about The Five Habits of Highly Neurotic Authors. It has some practical suggestions.

Which brings me to … what do you do on those days when your doubt your writing ability?

Doing Battle With Demons

Much as I would like this to be about writing actual warfare with demonic entities, it is alas rather more metaphorical. The demons in question are things that I live with on a day to day basis.

Everyone has their personal demons. For some it's all things alcoholic, for others their health. Life - or perhaps Someone - appears to have gifted creative people with a disproportionate share of personal demons. There's certainly no shortage of musicians, artists or authors with tragic life stories and the kind of self-destructive behavior that usually goes with losing to one's demons.

Mine have been... loud lately. It happens. I can go months, even years, with the medication cocktail keeping everything under control. Then something shifts, shakes my balance a bit, and they're back, whispering their perverse little notions into my mind and trying to convince me that the world would be a better place without me in it.

It's not that bad yet. I've gotten better at recognizing the early warning signs and doing something about it. One of the somethings is - surprise! - splatting to everyone I consider half-way friendly about what's going on, on the grounds that the more I talk it out, the more chance there is something someone says will be the right trigger to chase them off. This time.

I even know what's causing this outbreak - it's work-related. I'm mentally and emotionally worn out. Unfortunately, I'm also not getting any kind of time away until September when I'm going to be exhausting myself visiting Australia. Since the layoffs were announced at the start of the year, there's been no letup in the constant grind of too much to do, not enough time to do it, and everything is more critical than everything else. Add in project scope blowout and a whole bunch of other work stress factors, big and little, and I've run out of me.

The real problem with this, at least as far as the Mad Genius Club is concerned, is that it plays havoc with my writing when this sort of thing hits. I can go weeks without writing anything when an episode hits - or worse, everything I write turns darker-than-dark.

How do you get past these crashes? What - if anything - helps you to dig out of the hole and get back on the level again?

Oh, and self-pity doesn't work. Chocolate does, at least until the pounds start piling up.

Algebra and Accounting ...

Okay, I know there are forums out there, where people write about mathematics, sometimes using mathematics to make a point simply because they love it.

I have to state here, that I do not love maths.

Over these holidays:

I've had to set up the chart of accounts and do the entries for 2 Super Funds (Self managed Superannuation Funds).

I've had to do my BAS (Business Activity Statement) entering all income and expenditure and allocating a percentage to GST (Goods and Services Tax) and working out my GST for the quarter.

AND, (if this is not bad enough), I've had to do 14 pages of year 9 algebra with my 15 year old son so he could catch up with what he missed last school year. I did General Maths in high school (not algebra) and that was almost forty years ago.

Hence the soothing picture of the beach and ocean!

But, as I was working on these maths related things, it occurred to me that with numbers it is philosophically simple. (I'm not discussing String Theory here). You do a bank reconciliation, you account for everything. You are either right or you are wrong. You do an algebra equation and there is a right answer.

After writing books where every word carries nuances that vary depending on your cultural background (US, UK, Canada, South Africa, Australia), where you build characters with those words, where you build worlds with those words and then you try to tell a story on the shifting sands of these foundations ... maths was strangely satisfying.

I know I can write a good story. (Sometimes I get too close and get something wrong, but I can see this when critique partners point it out). I have written children's books that went out to 5 publishers before they were sold, not because there was anything wrong with the books, but because they weren't what the first 4 publishers wanted. I have Book One of four different fantasy series sitting on my hard drive, waiting for the right publisher/s to come along.

I have the three books of the King Rolen's Kin series coming out this year. I know I can write an entertaining book, but I don't know if the books I write will automatically sell. This was a big revelation after I sold my first children's book. I assumed that once I achieved publication, my next book would automatically sell. I looked on that first professional sale a bit like the Master Plumber giving his apprentice his papers and making him a professional.

Not knowing if a perfectly good book will sell is really frustrating.

If I was an accountant, I could 'write as many books as I could manage' and people would pay me because a bank reconciliation is either right or wrong. No one sits there and says, I liked it, but it isn't the reconciliation I'm looking for right now.

Creative people like writers, musicians and artists get up everyday, pour their hearts into their work and do it, knowing there is a strong chance it will be rejected even if it is good.

Why do we do it?

That's an easy one. We can't stop ourselves being creative.

But how do we keep doing it? How do you shore up our confidence despite the vagaries and indignities of our chosen profession?

Now that is a much harder question.

How do you keep going?

Weather and Writing

We knew it was coming. Last night's national weather report on both the BBC and ITN ended with the words "And it will be particularly bad in the Medway Towns".

To some degree, the Medway Towns is weather-girl code for London. National weather forecasters are not allowed to mention London. It just provokes letters in green ink from pedantic autists in the provinces along the lines of:

Dear Sir
You always focus on London in your weather forecasts and you never mention my own village of Lower Fumbling in the Wold. We have been an important centre for sheep dung distribution since the times of Ethelread the Unready.........

Well you get the idea but I digress.

They said it was coming and it has. The car is snowed in. A nasty east wind is giving us a wind chill of minus twenty five centigrade and I have had to put a blow heater in the rabbit's hutch.

No 2 daughter has set off on a trek through the snow to get her hair done, the risk of freezing to death in a snowdrift somewhere being infinately preferable to a bad hair day. I am supposed to run her back around the M25, London's Magic Roundabout, on Sunday so she can get back to Uny in time for her lecture on the depiction of nude women on Greek urns.

Mind you, it's not all bad. I am averaging 1,000 words a day on my novel.

My novelette (novela? long short story?) Storming Venus, the sequel to Storming Hell, is up on eArc at Baen's Universe.

You can read it for free here:

http://www.baens-universe.com/articles/Storming_Venus

If you like it please leave a donation.

John

PS the first person to ask how much a Greek urns will get attacked by flying monkeys.

Writing in the Time Warp

Perhaps not as much as with Dave Freer at the moment, but sometimes I wonder what I expected when I became a novelist. I know I had some vague idea – when I was very young, say, Junior Highschool – that writers were very important people and therefore I assumed that they had important-people trappings.

My dad talked about writers with far more respect than he reserved to doctors, engineers of anyone else. Writers were, in fact, superhuman as far as he was concerned. And I assumed these rare achievers had ... well, prerogatives. Secretaries, a research staff, people to fawn on them and bring them coffee. This seemed logical given the effort that went into producing books.
By the time I was in highschool, though, I’d heard enough grumbling from writers – in prologues and afterwords and in interviews – to surmise they were one-man operations, sometimes with staff.

But I still didn’t "get" it. I thought, you know, you write a story once a month of so. For this you need inspiration, so you travel a lot and take picturesque walks, and you do an awful lot of looking romantic while sitting in a coffee house. Okay – that’s not true, exactly. I’m being sarcastic about the motives of my younger self, but that’s more or less how I viewed it, absent the heavy dose of sarcasm.

Of course I always envisioned having a family of some sort or at least a home but I assumed, perhaps with more excuse, that the day to day issues of family care would be lifted off my shoulders by menials.

With more excuse? you ask. Why, certainly. You see, almost anyone with my level of education and in a professional or even semi-professional career in Portugal would have a cleaning lady and – at least while the kids were little – a nanny of some sort. (If the grandparents didn’t take the kids for the day.) Later on there would be after-school tutors to help them in any project/subject they were having trouble with. At the level of income/success we’re at as a family if we lived in Portugal we would have just that. (The pay offs, even at the material level are myriad, though. I’m not implying I’d have lived better there. Trust me when I say I’m not stupid and there’s a reason I live here. Someone said in a blog I was reading that going to Europe be prepared to take two "levels" of pay off your lifestyle, because that’s how daily life would translate. I’m sure there’s some mitigation at the highest ranks and in some European countries, but in general that’s my experience in Portugal. Hotels "better" than the ones we can afford here are considerably less comfortable and "cater" less to our whims, etc. This is not an argument, just my experience. However, human labor is cheaper in Portugal and therefore having cleaning ladies and such far more feasible.)

So imagine my surprise if I’d ever been told there’d be days like this. Younger kid has project due at school, so he was working all day every day over the weekend, then after school yesterday. He came down with some form of laryngitis late last night. Cue in the argument over whether he HAD to go to school today. He said he did, but since my last flue started at the throat I wasn’t sure. By the time it was decided it was past midnight. I then had to get up at seven to take a note to his chem lab partner (actually to attendance, to pass on to her.) Then when I got home I found his mandatory volunteerism forms would also have to be turned in today. (No, I’m not without appreciation of the irony of the concept, but I prefer not to dwell on it, since I’d rather not get sick all over the keyboard. It’s a sick concept and if we’re lucky it breeds cynicism. If we’re not lucky it breeds a perverse idea that people are supposed to work for no pay when authorities tell them to. What it does NOT do is encourage people to care for other people. That is at best done by educating empathy, not by mandating – mostly – make work.) So, back I go with the forms. Somewhere along there I ate lunch, then spent the afternoon (as the kid got up and tried to finish his project) fielding questions and trying to help when his computer went belly up (which it’s doing a lot now.)

In the middle, between all this, I tried to do a little work on the proposal that was going so well yesterday and that I couldn’t wait to continue. I think I did a page, which is pathetic, but pretty good considering.

So, what is the point of this long rant, other than belly aching, which I confess I’m doing. My point is the same as last week, with illness. We tend to look at books and think we’re reading optimal work. We tend to imagine someone – say Pterry – working in his office, with the door shut and maybe music playing. We never wonder if a chapter was pounded out while he was dealing with a terminal cat having seizures next to his desk and requiring medicine. Or if he had to drive his daughter (some years back) to her choir concert, between one paragraph and the next. And yet, it’s far more likely the books we read were written that way than that they were perfected pieces dropped from the sky. All these interruptions and multitasking are more likely for writers – I think – than most other professionals because we work from home. Also, more and more, we’re required to keep an eye on promotion and an eye on agent/editor relations, and an eye on field rumors, leaving us the mythical fourth eye to actually look at the writing.

Right now half of you are saying "Well, that’s why you re-write and proof read." Noted. And of course. These posts are often not proofread – due to time constraints – so you all know how much I need that. BUT the rewriting and proof reading, too, go on under these conditions.
So, is any work ever perfect? Probably not. But it happens. In between all the rest. Someone said that life is what happens while you’re dealing with other things. The same could be said of your life’s work – what really commands your passion. It happens between other tasks, disasters and events.

I often hear newby writers say they’re waiting until – fill in the blank – retirement, vacation, the kids move out, they get a promotion, whatever before they write their big book. The book will never happen. How do I know? I have a collection of tomes on my bedside table. The sort of hard cover book you don’t want to drag around while cleaning or washing dishes. I’m going to read them as soon as I have a free afternoon/a day off/a week away that I’m not working in. Only those things get filled with family outings, shopping for books, or just napping on the bed with the cats.

Imperfect and sometimes frustrating as my writing is, I do it when I can. Because it’s what I love, so I make time for it. Even when it’s shuffled amid all the rest.
So, what are your strategies? What would be your ideal writing day? What are your main frustrations, trying to write if you do? And if you’re not a writer, how do you see the life of your favorite author? Do you think he/she is above this mere mortal fray?

Something to make us Smile and Inspire us.

Feeling bereft of inspiration this week I went agoogling. The wonderful thing about the internet is that you can find almost anything. Here is a Great Quotes site.

The first quote came from Art, but it also applies to books. The rest were under the topic of Writing.

Something profound

Art is not a study of positive reality, it is the seeking for ideal truth. George Sand, 1804-1876, French Novelist

Something tongue in cheek.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. E.L. Doctorow, 1931 , American novelist

Something from a fellow genre writer.

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success. Raymond Chandler, 1888-1959, American Author

On why we write.

The need to express oneself in writing springs from a mal-adjustment to life, or from an inner conflict which the adolescent (or the grown man) cannot resolve in action. Those to whom action comes as easily as breathing rarely feel the need to break loose from the real, to rise above, and describe it... I do not mean that it is enough to be maladjusted to become a great writer, but writing is, for some, a method of resolving a conflict, provided they have the necessary talent.
Andre Maurois, 1885-1967, French Writer

Something on style.

It is excellent discipline for an author to feel that he must say all that he has to say in the fewest possible words, or his readers is sure to skip them. John Ruskin, 1819-1900, British Critic, Social Theorist

Something earthy.

The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shock-proof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it. Ernest Hemingway, 1898-1961, American Writer

Something from a frustrated fellow writer.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent. James Baldwin, 1924-1987, American Author

On how hard writing is.

Only amateurs say that they write for their own amusement. Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth. Writing may be interesting, absorbing, exhilarating, racking, relieving. But amusing? Never! Edna Ferber, 1887-1968, American Author

On how hard success is.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life. Organizations for writers palliate the writer's loneliness, but I doubt if they improve his writing. He grows in public stature as he sheds his loneliness and often his work deteriorates. For he does his work alone and if he is a good enough writer he must face eternity, or the lack of it, each day. Ernest Hemingway, 1898-1961, American Writer

And my favourite.

If you describe things as better than they are, you are considered to be a romantic; if you describe things as worse than they are, you will be called a realist; and if you describe things exactly as they are, you will be thought of as a satirist. Quentin Crisp. 1908-, British Author

Do you have any inspirational quotes printed up and pinned to your work area?