Is He Telling Me to Give Up, Or Testing Me to See How Badly I Want It?

I have very poor eyesight. There hasn’t been any sight in the left eye since birth. The right, well, that’s cataracts, a matter of aging. So I taught myself to dictate so I could continue to write. Then, I discovered I’d had a pinpoint stroke and some other unpleasant brain-related issues.  Now, I have some intermittent speech problems and the attention span of a flea. So much for dictation. Writing in longhand, as I did way back when is out. Arthritis. I’m lucky I can grip an orange!

 

It’s been said that God never throws more at us than we can handle. He must think stubbornness is strength.

I have all kinds of book ideas that will probably never be written because I’m so much slower than I used to be–and I’m not getting any younger. Back the the ’80s, I wrote The Unicorn’s Daughter in four months and it required very little editing. Ten years ago, I finished Chasing the Wind after working on it for ten years. There are at least five projects on the back burner at the moment. I want to write them. The ideas are there, forming, percolating–but they never seem to get any further.

Am I giving up? No, not yet. In a few weeks, I’ll be publishing a collection of posts from my personal blog, The Three Rs: Rants, Raves and (Occasional) Reflections. I have a memoir almost finished, Sam’s Story in progress, and Collin and I are working on a series that started with Chasing the Wind. With Collin collaborating, I can at least get that far.

I started a novel featuring five secondary characters from Chasing the Wind, but found it had no plot–and a comedy about the quirky residents of a college town, including a booze hound who really is a dog. Just a bunch of episodes. I thought they would have to be scrapped. Then I remembered that my partner in crime, William Kendall, does several serials within his blog, Speak of the Devil–including one featuring a cranky Mountie who hates entertainment reporters.

Maybe these projects aren’t dead, after all. At least not until I am….

 

Decisions, Decisions…Maybe I Should Just Flip a Coin!

I grew up on a farm, and I’d love to live on one again–with more animals than people around, no kids hitting my front door with their soccer ball, no noisy neighbors, little traffic. But apartment living is much more practical at this point in my life for a number of reasons–for one, I can’t drive. Intractable epilepsy makes having a driver’s license impossible, along with a number of other activities most people take for granted. Two, arthritis–not only can I not drive, most days I find walking requires a monumental effort. You should see me trying to get off my couch! A small place, easy to keep up with on the cleaning front, makes much more sense. So while I yearn for the solitude of farm life and a good place to set up a telescope and do some serious stargazing, I settle for noisy neighbors and the frequent wail of police sirens. I’m a little fed up with people coming in while we’re not home, though. Collin and I both work at home, so we’re here 95% of the time. Can’t they come while we’re here? The day we came home to find our shoe rack rearranged and a strange device on the wall behind our TV, we bought a security camera so we could see what’s going on in here while we’re out. (It’s cool. We can watch what’s happening at home from Collin’s phone.)

As I grow older, it’s also more difficult to read. Cataracts and glaucoma are a nasty combination. Fortunately, my current favorite authors, Janet Evanovich and Jim Butcher, are available through Audible. These days, though, I find myself choosing nonfiction more often than not. Go figure. Ten years ago, it was all fiction all the time–or almost all the time, anyway. I usually steer clear of my publisher’s Facebook page these days, as most of the authors there are looking for reviews–you know, “I’ll review yours if you review mine.” With my vision problems, it would take so long to read just one book for review, I don’t volunteer, and I don’t ask for reviews. Wouldn’t be fair to ask if I can’t reciprocate.

I have the same ambivalence as a writer. The ideas are there. The motivation isn’t. I can write something funny and it comes as easily as breathing. Mysteries and romance, not so much. What once came effortlessly is now a daily struggle. Eventually, I’ll finish something.

Eventually. Maybe.

I hate doing promotion and marketing, though. That’s one of the few things I miss about traditional publishing–they did all of that for me. I refuse to do it now, even if it means lower sales. No offense to my fellow authors, but I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one who finds the tsunami of Buy My Book posts on social media annoying. There’s promotion, and then there’s taking it way too far. Authors are fast replacing proud new parents and grandparents armed with baby photos as the people everyone goes out of their way to avoid. (Have any of you ever seen the episode of I Love Lucy in which Lucy and Ricky are at odds with Fred and Ethel over Ricky’s nightly showings of his home movies? I don’t want people throwing rocks at me.)

I know self-promotion is a necessary evil for authors trying to build their careers, whether they’re self, indie or traditionally published (unless, in the latter case, they’re lucky enough to be in one of the top spots on a Big Five publisher’s list and the recipient of a portion of their publisher’s promotional budget). It’s not easy. I’ve known talented authors who would rather give up writing than have to do their own marketing. Some of them actually have.

Whatever happened to word-of-mouth being the best sales tool? I guess I’ll find out….