The numbers are not on my side. I live in poverty, I’m bonkers and I’m old-ish. So, even if something happened out of the blue to make me some sort of a “success” it would all happen in the context of it happening when most people are thinking of retirement.
And, yet, you have to have hope. You have to have something to think about when you’re not thinking about how the only people who seem to read your blog are haters, stalkers, or FBI agents about to push you out a window once Trump is in office (sigh.) (I’m aware there’s at least one actual nice person who reads this blog on a regular basis, but that’s the exception, I fear.)
You have to believe, you know? You have to believe in something, anything to keep you going.
So, once I finally shake off my existential dread that I’ve been feeling the last few weeks, I’m going to throw myself back into writing at least one novel.
Well, I’ve finally reached total creative lockup when it comes to doing anything of note while I wait to find out who will be the next POTUS. All I can do is just stare out into space and wait.
It sucks.
My fear is, of course, that we won’t know who the president is going to be for months and THAT will keep me in my current state. Or we know that Harris has won, but Trump flips out and somehow manages to provoke the Proud Boys into doing significant political violence around the country while we lurch towards Certification Day.
Anyway, I have vowed to myself to start working on my novel(s) again on Wednesday morning. I can’t be in neutral mentally, emotionally and creatively for the months it might take to figure out who POTUS is going to be.
I don’t quite know when it’s going to happen, but very soon, I’m going to throw myself back into working on the novel. And it might not just be the passion project. It might be the other novel(s) I have rolling around in my mind.
I don’t know when it will happen, but it will be soon.
I’m beginning to grow restless and I need to be productive. It’s only because of a very specific set of circumstances that I have this particular situation in my life and when things change — as they inevitably will — I would prefer not to look back with regret.
I may start work on the novel tomorrow.
Now, of course, there is the looming election I have to deal with. I hope — hope — that no matter who wins that I won’t have to deal with some disruption in my life that forces me to end my work on the novel. I don’t think that is going to happen, but I am worried that something will.
I could be a domestic political refugee before it’s over with, the way things are going. But let’s hope not.
But for just not knowing if America is going to descend into fascism or not, I would throw myself into working on my novel(s) again. But the whole fascism thing is still very much up in the air at the moment.
Of course, there is a risk, the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day will be so much up in the air that I STILL won’t be the proper headspace to get any writing done.
I just don’t know.
But I think — maybe — that I should be able to get some writing done in this week or so lead up to Election Day. It’s possible, not probable. My mind is just so scrambled and ill-focused because of tension in the air because of the election that it is really difficult for me to concentrate enough to write.
I have a feeling that one way or another, I’m going to lurch into writing hard core again pretty soon. I hope.
For some reason, a part of me feels there might be unexpected opportunities for me in the near future. I have no idea what they might be, but…I senses something.
I think I’m just about ready to get back to working on a few novels. The one novel I’ve been working on the longest — the one that is meant to be part of a six-novel project — is set to be reworked significantly. The chief reason is that the stakes simply aren’t very high at the moment.
The novel is just about one woman’s obsession with owning a small town newspaper. That’s it. But I’ve decided that by leaning into an already-there scifi element of the novel that I can significantly raise the stakes. And, to a certain extent, I can give the novel something of a trick ending, cueing up the next novel in the series. (Which, at the moment, is much more of a traditional murder mystery.)
As part of that, I’m going to have to sit down and rewrite a whole lot of the novel, which is going to slow me down. My goal is now to query something, anything about a year from now.
Ultimately, the six novel series I’m working on will produce an American Lisbeth Salander.
Of course, there continues to be the issue of stripping being a big part of the novel. This is going to make a lot of literary agents blanch, I’m afraid. But that’s my vision for the novel, so there you go. And, what’s more, I still have a few other scifi novels rolling around in my mind that I my piviot towards if all else fails.
Something that doesn’t have the spicyness that the main, passion project novel currently has.
But I am well aware that if I don’t hurry up, I’m going to be in my 60s before I become a published author, if I ever do. And I am well aware there are many, many, MANY reasons — on the face of it at least — why I will *never* get published.
I’m too old. Too bonkers. The list goes on.
Yet, you have to have hope, you know?
One thing I continue to worry about is, of course, the whole Trump situation. I refuse, however, to just be in neutral until the election. I have to get something, anything done. So, starting today, I’m going to stop mulling things so much and start to read, watch and write what I can.
Only because of a very specific set of unexpected circumstances do I have all this time to be creative. I could not have asked for a more ideal situation, in fact. So, I think I’m going to go back to working on novels and reading (and watching) very soon.
I have been in a creative neutral the last few months for various reasons, of late because, well, I’ve been really worried about the whole Trump situation. And, yet, I think now — maybe — I can finally, finally stop staring out to space with abstract angst and fear and actually get something done.
It’s just not practical to not do anything until the election. I have do SOMETHING with this very precious time I’ve been afforded. It could all change very quickly and I might regret that I didn’t use this time while I had it.
It’s a cliche for a middle aged man to pick up a guitar and start singing. But I am mildly interested in buying a guitar so I might sit down and write song lyrics. And, yet, the usual problems of age, no experience or connections and living in the middle of nowhere pop up.
This is where if I lived in Seoul, then, maybe, this wouldn’t be such a big problem and I could maybe start a band and start to sing my own songs. Seoul was like that when it came to creativity.
But, here I am. Alone, old and living in the middle of nowhere.
Anyway, I just don’t quite know what to do. It will be interesting to see if I ever do *anything* with my life besides mope around about what happened in Seoul many moons ago.
For the time being I fear I may be stuck in something of a creative neutral while I wait to see if the country collapses into civil war after the 2024 election. i don’t think it’s going to happen, but, as the song goes, “the waiting is the hardest part.”
It’s the not knowing that is really getting to me.
It’s just a general sense of angst about the fate of the country that has me mentally preoccupied for the time being. I have all these creative things I want to do, and I’m locked in neutral in my mind and heart while I wait to see what happens next.
But hopefully — hopefully — I will shake out of it sooner rather than later. It would suck if I simply stared out into space for the next two weeks while I waited to see if the country collapsed into chaos or not.
I’m getting up in age now and my options for ever becoming a “success” are dwindling. I continue to work on a novel or two and they’re shaping up to be good enough that there is a least a greater-than-zero chance that they will at least catch the eye of a literary agent.
An example of my past work. Forgive the slight blur.
But I have been doing some serious contemplation of late and it seems the sweetspot for me ever being any sort of “success” would be as a fashion photographer. I have an “eye” for beauty and I have a native ability to take a great photo.
Yet, of course, there are a number of pretty big complications.
One, is, of course that I’m very, very poor. I live in poverty at the moment in large part because I’m totally bonkers. That particular truth is something that I was reminded of in a rather…uh…brutal…fashion in the last few months.
And, yet, there is a part of me that continues to daydream. If I ever somehow, magically, fell into some money I probably would use the money to invest in the photographic equipment necessary to at least attempt to begin a career in fashion photography.
I don’t expect this to happen any time soon, if ever. And, what’s more, the context of any such “success” would be something of a downer. If I lived up to my “potential” as the late Annie Shapiro quipped, all anyone would want to talk about is how I lay fallow for about two decades. And that doesn’t even begin to address how all anyone would want to talk about is how nuts I am.
But I definitely have an eye for beauty and photography.
I’m kind of in a little bit of a period of reflection of late about the passion project novel I’ve been working on for a few years now. I know what I want to do and how I want to do it — but in a hazy, macro way. The specifics are really beginning to wear me down.
My heroine has a sleeve tattoo on her left arm like Megan Fox apparently does.
So, I’m doing what I always do in such situations — I’m doing a lot of daydreaming.
I hope to snap out of it sooner rather than later, but there is something else that is kind of causing me some problems — what happens after the 2024 election. It could be that I’m really, really over reacting and over thinking things. I do that a lot — that’s kind of my thing.
But, yet, even though I know that to be the case, I still find myself sort of locked up on a creative basis because I just don’t know what the state of the country will be in a few weeks. And, yet, just by writing about it in a blog post like this helps me a lot.
It is just going to take a little bit of time for me to figure out the specifics of how I’m going to improve the novel’s stakes. I’ve decided to use scifi to make the novel a lot more compelling. So, rather than just be a character study about a woman obsessed with owning a small town newspaper, a big chunk of the novel is going to be about some cool, timely scifi issues.
The aim is that doing so will really make the overall novel more compelling. While I really like what I’ve come up with already in regards to the novel, it seems possible the novel is a little TOO personal in nature. And that doesn’t even begin to address the most controversial element of the novel — the whole stripper issue.
I really like the stripper element to the novel, but whenever I mention that part of the novel to a prospective beta reader, they just blanch. But I believe if you actually read the novel and see that part of the novel in context that one won’t be turned off — too much.
But it’s because of things like that that I continue to be determined to work on a backup scifi novel as well, one that is pretty straightforward in its marketability. Yet, because of how different it is, it is taking me longer than I expected to get it off the ground.
The ultimate goal is to get something, anything finished to the point where I can query next fall. Wish me luck.
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