Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Confession...

Is it good for the soul, or is it whining?

I'm not going to go on about this, but for the past year, I've been working, working, working, and not getting much that's keepable. I show up at the laptop, and I put down words, but they don't really make sense in the way writing used to make sense to me. I don't know how this has happened. I'm assuming it's a writing mid-life crisis of some sort. And I'm not giving up.

To keep from losing my mind because my job is so frustrating, I have started walking every day. As I was walking last night in a t-shirt, two sweatshirts, a scarf, mittens, and 30-something degree weather with wind whipping at gusts of 25-35 (neither writing nor walking is sublime fun right now), I realized I'm finally keeping more than I'm putting in "keep-in-case" files. The page counts are terribly unequal (much more in the keep-in-case than the keepable), but the scale is finally tipping the good way.

The thing about a writer's job is that you don't publish if you don't submit, and I haven't been. I can't tell you how the hot, fetid breath of you-must-submit has licked at the back of my neck, but there's not much sense in plying my editor with stuff that doesn't work.

Also, I haven't been able to keep up here because I've felt as if I'm writing about writing, but not succeeding at it. You know--I've felt like a fraud.

But here's a new day, and the other thing about writing is that the only way to fail utterly is stop.

2 comments:

Debbie White said...

Hey girl!!! You sound down. I have faith in you that you'll get through this "dry spell" and turn out your usual excellent work!!!

Anna Adams said...

Hey, you! Thanks for your faith. I love you!