- Joined
- Jul 5, 2012
- Messages
- 14,683
- Reaction score
- 24,618
- Location
- Massachusetts
- Website
- elizabethbonesteel.com
I do have a pretty good track record. 0% of my queries so far have been rejected.
I am absolutely hiring you to do my marketing.
I do have a pretty good track record. 0% of my queries so far have been rejected.
Silver, try the music. I rarely write in silence. Having music in the background helps keep me less distracted, though there's always a transition time from bouncing around on the Internet to getting down to serious writing time.
General pep talk: It is fine to admire other writers' work. It's fine to try different things and use aspects of ideas you find elsewhere. We come across these little nuggets and they germinate inside us and they become altered, some more subtly than others, from what they were when we found them. The difference is in context, execution, perception, any of a myriad different ways. That's the thing about writing. Nobody can tell the story you have in you the way you would tell it.
Others might tell a similar story. They'll tell it differently. You might think they do something or other with it particularly well, better than you. But they're not telling your story. They're not telling it your way.
We're all going to suck sometimes. We're going to fail because that's how we learn. I think that's especially true for writing. We get better by doing. We get better - we grow - by trying.
You're awesome. Keep at it!
Yesterday my doctor called--the specialist himself--to tell me that I have a benign brain tumor, but it is growing fast and I need either have surgery or radiation to avoid brain stem damage.
I should be thrilled to have such a good diagnosis
As for writing, I am definitely of the forcing myself school at this point. Treating it like a job.
This is slightly off-topic, but I need a pep talk on my writing. I feel completely lost today, and I know it isn't logical, but I think writing is what I need to do. Yet I feel unable to create.
Yesterday my doctor called--the specialist himself--to tell me that I have a benign brain tumor, but it is growing fast and I need either have surgery or radiation to avoid brain stem damage. The prognosis is good and it is not cancer, just a big lump that took my hearing and is causing my vertigo.
I should be thrilled to have such a good diagnosis, I should be happy that the time off work means more time to write, but I can't seem to write. I just stare at the screen. Ironically, I had just hit that groove on the new book where the story had started streaming forward, but now there's nothng at all. I only want to think/write about acoustic neuroma.
I do that, Silver. My solution is to drop (literal or figurative) a bomb in the middle of the story that will take it in a different direction.
But yeah, it's easy to get into "write what you know."
This is slightly off-topic, but I need a pep talk on my writing. I feel completely lost today, and I know it isn't logical, but I think writing is what I need to do. Yet I feel unable to create.
Yesterday my doctor called--the specialist himself--to tell me that I have a benign brain tumor, but it is growing fast and I need either have surgery or radiation to avoid brain stem damage. The prognosis is good and it is not cancer, just a big lump that took my hearing and is causing my vertigo.
I should be thrilled to have such a good diagnosis, I should be happy that the time off work means more time to write, but I can't seem to write. I just stare at the screen. Ironically, I had just hit that groove on the new book where the story had started streaming forward, but now there's nothng at all. I only want to think/write about acoustic neuroma.
Aww, Silver. Thanks. And yes, you're right.
And really, all I keep thinking is "I might not make it (meaning earn money at writing), but I DEFINITELY won't if I don't keep going."
It's a crap shoot for sure. But I decided that this is how I want to spend my declining years, no matter what.
But thanks.
I should be thrilled to have such a good diagnosis
"I got some news that's really shitty" and "I could have gotten rather worse news" are not mutually exclusive; the second doesn't cancel out the first. so you're allowed to not be rejoicing