The Coldness of the Mind

Last night, I had a dream in which the whole world was iced over. I looked out my front door and a creeping, crackling pattern, like grasping pale fingers, was coming right for me. It had spread its way across the green, where there were no children playing, and made me feel like an ant crawling across the face of an iceberg. I slammed the front door shut, but I knew it was only a matter of time before the grey-blue ice, hard as steel, wormed its way in around the hinges and through any gap it could find.

It wasn’t a pleasant dream.

I’ve been thinking about ice a lot lately (due, of course, to the setting of ‘Emmeline’), and that’s probably why my mind went to a cold, dark place when I was lost in dreams. It’s an unfortunate coincidence that ice – at least, the sort of ice we get here, the dark insidious kind, the kind which no footwear can outsmart – is one of my biggest fears. This winter, however, my little island has been battered by Atlantic storms instead of Arctic vortexes, which is equally dreadful; most of the south of Ireland is underwater at the moment.

Flooding on Wandesford Quay in Cork City. Photo by Darragh McSweeney.
Image sourced: rte.ie

So many people have lost everything – businesses, homes, property – and so many of them can’t purchase insurance, due to where they live being prone to flooding. Sometimes I don’t understand the world. Surely people who live in places like that need more help, rather than less?

Am I the crazy one? Wait – don’t answer that.

I have been out of sorts this week. My head is distracted, my thoughts are ragged, my energy levels are through the floor. ‘Emmeline’ is sitting beside me, not-so-neatly printed and annotated, from last week’s editing sessions; I have three or four small changes to make before I’ll be ready to leave it to percolate for a while. Then, once I’ve checked it again post-percolation, it will be ready to send out into the world. I hope to get to those final edits today, and then it’ll be on to the next thing.

Oh, and I may not have mentioned this before, but – last week on Twitter I noticed an author excitedly promoting their newly published book which not only had the same title as one I had been planning, but took as its central plot motif something which I had come up with in the middle of last year, and which I was quite excited about. This, surely, has to be something nobody’s ever thought of before, I told myself at the time. This is interesting and unusual and could turn out to be something great! Little did I know that the other author was probably doing their final edits on their book at that stage. So, that was another of those bittersweet moments where you realise you’re having good ideas, but just not quickly enough. Of course I’ll be interested to read this other book when it’s published, and I wish its author well. However, I really hope this ‘idea duplication’ thing stops happening to me, one of these years.

Anyway. My mind feels gripped with a cold hand this week. I hope it relaxes its hold soon, because I have a lot of work to get to. I have another idea I want to flesh out, and I want to revisit ‘Eldritch’ and try to do a rewrite, and I need to start picking up with my submissions to competitions and magazines, because I’ve completely let that slide over the past few months.

I think I need a calendar, and an action plan, and someone to tell me to pace myself… Or maybe just a holiday.

Dragon boat racing in Hong Kong – rowing to the beat of a drum sounds like just the ticket!
Image: dailymail.co.uk

Have a good Thursday, one and all.

Ode to Joy

If you’re interested in writing, and you think you’d like to do NaNoWriMo but you haven’t signed up for it yet, then I have two words for you.

Do It.

Image: steventallow.com

Well, actually, I’m not sure if it’s possible to sign up now that November has started, but if it is, then I recommend you go for it as soon as you possibly can, and if you can’t sign up this year then make sure you sign up next year. I’ll see you there.

Writing 50,000 words in thirty days is nothing to sneeze at, of course. It is a commitment, and it’s not exactly a walk in the park. But – and this is a big ‘but’ – it is absolutely possible to achieve. Really.

I realise I’m speaking as a person who is only one-fifth of the way through this particular challenge, but I am filled with certainty that I can see it through. The reason I know is because the first ten thousand words of my NaNo project are now under my belt, and they have been so much fun to write.

Image: flickr.com

I broke the 10K yesterday, and it felt amazing. It didn’t feel amazing because I had hit 10,000 words, or because I had struggled my way to that point, or because now I’d made it there I could stop and take a rest; it felt amazing because I know there is so much more still to come, and I can’t wait to keep going.

Normally, when I’m writing, I feel under pressure. I feel squashed beneath my own self-imposed deadlines, or I am actually working to a deadline – whether it’s for a competition, or a particular submission opportunity, or whatever – or, for some other reason, I am screaming at myself to get the job done, as quickly as is humanly possible. For NaNo, even though I am also working to a ‘deadline’ – i.e. if I don’t finish my 50,000 words by November 30th, I won’t ‘win’ – it feels completely different to anything I’ve written before. My NaNo project is for fun; it’s an idea that I’m working through as I go. It’s something I’m discovering as I write. If it works, that’s amazing – I can take the first draft which, hopefully, will be completed during the next month and make something out of it – but if it doesn’t work, then that’s fine too.

I am allowing NaNoWriMo to remove some of the pressure I normally put on myself when I write, and I am rediscovering the reason I do any of this in the first place.

It’s because I love writing as much as this cat loves this dog. More, maybe.

Image: dashburst.com

Over the last while – probably because I’ve been getting involved with agents, and large competitions, and attempts to get my stories published, all of which have gone nowhere – I’ve been feeling a bit disheartened about my writing. I’ve been working as hard as ever, and putting as much of myself as possible into it, but there’s been a sheen of desperation and panic over everything. I didn’t always sit down at my desk in the morning full of enthusiasm and pep, ready to start the day; putting words on paper wasn’t always a labour of love, and as my stress levels rose so my happiness diminished.

That was my own fault. I let that happen. I allowed my love for words and my desire to write be overtaken by the strain of actually writing – because wanting to write and actually doing the work are two different things – and I began to forget why I ever bothered getting started. It’s easy to fall into this way of thinking, and I should’ve been aware that it could happen. I should have been on my guard. It’s no wonder that despair is never far from the shoulder of anyone who labours away, alone, at something they love; when you invest so much of yourself in what you do every day, a certain amount of disappointment and frustration is inevitable.

That’s no excuse to let it scupper you, though, or to allow it to erode your joy.

So, that’s why I’m so grateful to NaNoWriMo, and why I’m so glad I signed up. If I hadn’t decided, on a whim, to take part this year, I wouldn’t now have 10,000 words of a new project completed. I would never have met my sparky little heroine, and her story would never have started to unfold in my mind. And I might have forgotten how it felt to click ‘open’ on your Work in Progress document of a morning and be met with a wave of excitement and happiness instead of pressure and fear.

If you’re taking part, come and join me – here‘s my participant page, where you can add me as a writing buddy. If you’re not taking part, come and have a look anyway. Every drop of support will help me to reach my wordcount, and I’ll be forever in your debt.

Whatever it is you love, or whatever it is you do, try to remember why you love it so much and never, ever take it for granted. (Actually, that goes for people, too.) Joy needs to be nurtured, and fear can drive it out. Whatever it takes for you to recapture your joy, then go for it. For me, it was remembering how much fun writing can be. What’ll it be for you?

 

Teeny-Tiny Tuesday

Hello, all.

I’ve not been feeling well for the past couple of days. Yesterday, I struggled with a headache that strangled my brain to the point of affecting my vision, and today I feel rather like a person who has been shoved into a barrel and rolled, willy-nilly, down a rocky mountain path. I managed to get a good night’s sleep last night, which has – to be fair – worked wonders, but I’m still not feeling my best self, shall we say.

I think the recent hot weather has been playing havoc with my person – and before anyone accuses me of complaining about the good weather, I’m not, okay, it’s been great – but, as always happens, by the time I’m used to the heat, no doubt it’ll be gone again and I’ll have to re-acclimatise to our normal weather conditions. I’m always one step behind, weather-wise! While it really has been wonderful to see blue sky and to be able to go outside without a rainjacket in the middle of the summer, some of us (i.e. me) are built like Yetis and can only function properly at low temperatures. Heat is not my friend.

This is my baby picture. No, seriously!
Image: scaryforkids.com

Also, I’ve been doing my usual ‘mad panic pressure have-to-do-everything-all-at-once’ nonsense again, and I really feel like I’ve blown a gasket in my brain. Yesterday was a total disaster, writing-wise. My blog post took twice as long as normal to prepare, and as well as that I couldn’t concentrate for longer than five or ten minutes at a time; trying to get any meaningful work done was a frustrating torment. However, instead of leaving the writing behind and going off to do something else, like a sensible person, I tried to truck on through. I never learn, do I? I do have competition deadlines coming up, and I want to put my best work forward for them, so I am going to have to try to remember that sometimes the best thing you can do for your writing is not to write. Work you produce under pressure, or when you’re not feeling well, is never going to make the grade – all it will do is make you feel worse, set you back even further and give you a lot of sub-standard words and sentences to unpick when you’re back on your feet again.

So, I’m going to take it a little easier today. I’m going to write, of course, but I’m going to remember that it’s supposed to be enjoyable and fulfilling, not something which makes me cry over my keyboard. If I can only do it in ten-minute bursts, that’s fine; if I need to have a lie-down (which I never do in the middle of the day, on principle), then I’m going to allow myself to do that. I have to realise that if I don’t look after myself, nobody else is going to. Not to mention that I’m going to need my brain, my body and my mental health to see me through the rest of my (hopefully long and happy) writing career, and that means taking care of what I’ve got, however humble it might be.

But then I keep saying this, and I never actually do it. Today, I promise, I will take my own good advice. And I don’t have any fingers or toes crossed!

This picture made me laugh, so I’m passing it on to you. Happy Tuesday!
Image: futurity.com

Have a good day. Hopefully I’ll be back on form by tomorrow, and raring to go for the Wednesday Write-In, as normal. See you then!

Unworthy

Today’s post is not just an excuse to use an image like this:

They weren’t worthy! Neither am I!
Image: teamliquid.net

However, while it may not have been the main reason, I have to admit the thought of using this image was part of my decision-making process. I love ‘Wayne’s World’, the ‘We’re Not Worthy!’ sketch has always made me laugh, and – I promise – there’s a connection ‘twixt image and blog post. Today I wanted to write a bit about something which has been weighing on me lately, and it’s connected with a feeling of unworthiness, or a nagging sense of I’m not good enough and I should just give up now before I make an idiot of myself and everyone is probably secretly laughing at me.

It’s an extremely damaging thing, this feeling. Not only for my efforts to create a career, but also for my own mental health. As well as all that, it’s completely ridiculous, but I find it difficult to remember that at times.

Ever since I started to write, and made it public (i.e. by submitting work wherever I could submit it, starting this blog and telling people about what I was up to, and trying not to cringe while I described myself as ‘a writer’), I’ve received nothing but solid support. Everyone – including friends of friends, people who only know me through my parents or my husband or, amazingly, people who don’t know me in real life at all and who I’ve only met through the medium of the internet – has lifted me up on a swell of encouragement and has been delighted to hear about my efforts; several people have even told me how impressed they are by my decision to follow a dream and do my best to live the life I’ve always wanted. Sometimes, I wonder if this is part and parcel of being a writer in Ireland, where I still think creativity is seen as a good and noble thing and not completely off-the-wall – but then, I’ve received support from all over the world, so perhaps that’s beside the point. Whatever the reason, I am grateful beyond measure for every smidgen of encouragement, and I hope this feeling I’m trying to describe, this feeling of ‘unworthiness’, won’t be understood as ungrateful rejection of all the generous and loving support I’ve been lucky enough to receive. That’s not what I mean, at all. These unworthy feelings are something I’m imposing on myself; it’s not out of character for me, but I really wish I could stop doing it.

It all began to manifest like this: on one of the recent occasions where I had something accepted for publication, I remember greeting the news not with unalloyed joy and a sense of accomplishment, but with a tinge of discomfort and upset. I’ve been trying to work out why ever since, and I’ve concluded that it was because despite working hard over the story, I felt wasn’t good enough, and I hadn’t been expecting it to be accepted, and when it was – well. My brain sort of flipped.

I couldn’t bring myself to think that ‘maybe the story was a little bit better than you’d thought it was’ or ‘perhaps you’re being a little hard on yourself’; I started to think damaging and destructive things like ‘they must have been short on entries’ or ‘they needed to fill a space in the publication.’ Now, I’m pretty sure those things aren’t true. I’m pretty sure the publishers had no shortage of stories to choose from. They chose mine, but I couldn’t allow myself to be pleased. I started doing that thing I do – you know the one, where I have a reaction which I know is irrational and silly, but I can’t help myself – and it felt really unpleasant. I felt like I was unworthy of the honour of having my story accepted, like the publishers were doing me a favour instead of saying ‘This story is good enough to form part of our publication’; it made me feel very odd. I didn’t like it. At the same time, I didn’t really know what to do in order to tackle it.

Writing is not an easy thing – I’m not even talking about the act of pulling words out of your brain and slapping them down on a page, though that is difficult too, of course. What I mean is, it’s not an easy thing to spend so much time by yourself, and to have little but your own thoughts for company; even if, like me, you’re a person who enjoys being alone and who thrives in the world of the mind, it can be a challenge. I’m beginning to wonder if too much time spent thinking can lead to the struts which keep your mind steady buckling a little under the strain, which can affect the way you see the world and yourself, and your place in it. It’s hard, too, to pressure yourself just enough to meet all your obligations and deadlines without exerting too much force, and ending up pressuring yourself into oblivion. When you only have yourself to regulate the pressure, it’s clear that sometimes things can go wrong.

So, I’m taking that on board today, and I’m going to think about ways in which I can create a new balance in my life without sacrificing too much of my writing time. I may take a few days’ leave from the blog – a little holiday, perhaps – and I may print out, in big letters, a sign which says the words YOU ARE ENOUGH! and place it over my desk. I am enough – I do enough – I will be enough.

I hope nobody can relate to this post, and that you’re all too clever to allow yourselves to fall into a trap like this one. I hope that your writing lives (and your non-writing lives, come to that!) are flourishing, that you’re taking it easy, and not piling pressure on your own heads. Thank you for all your support – I hope I’ll be able to continue counting on it! – and I hope Tuesday turns out to be a jewel of a day for all of you.

And remember – you are enough!

Publish or Perish

My goodness, it’s cold this morning.

Almost as bad as this…
Image: fireballwhisky.com

It almost doesn’t matter, from my point of view, because what I’ll be doing today is printing out a hard copy of ‘Eldritch’ and going through it – line by line, word by word, syllable by syllable – with a pen. And, of course, I can retire to the coffee shop for this. Full of steam, condensation, and – crucially – other people, I’ll be able to stave off hypothermia in its kind embrace. Yay, say I, for coffee shops. Bastions of culture since the 1700s, and still going strong.

I don’t really want to look too closely at it, but it’s true that I also have before me a handwritten list of things that need to be done before the end of May. Most of them are competitions that I must enter; some are publications whose closing date for submissions is also the end of May. Then, of course, I have ‘Eldritch’, which needs to be gone and out of my mind by the end of May, too. It’s times like this I wish I had three brains. It’s really hard to divide attention between two or three projects and feel like you’re giving all of them your full attention, but I guess this is my lot. Deadlines don’t wait because you’re busy. Life doesn’t wait until you’re ready!

On the upside, my story, ‘Lord of the Land’, was published last night in the most recent issue of ‘Synaesthesia‘ magazine, and I was very happy to see it spring into life. This is the story I was telling you all about the other day, the one which I feel has more of me in it than most of the others I’ve written. Also, there’s a photo of me included at the end (brace yourselves); if you’ve always wondered what sort of head I have on me, well, wonder no more. I actually am a real life person, and not a shiny chrome android randomly hitting a keyboard, which may come as a relief to some of you. ‘Lord of the Land’ also has the dubious honour of being the last piece in my current clutch of ‘forthcoming’ publications for adults. I have one more story forthcoming for children, which will be published in about a week and a half, and after that, I’ll be all out for a while. Unless, of course, I manage to get some more stuff submitted, accepted and thrown out into the world. The cycle begins again.

This is the challenge, and the beauty, of writing, of course. You need to keep up the momentum. You can’t afford to stop once you’ve managed to build up even a small head of steam, and you start feeling the pressure of it quite quickly. It’s not unwelcome pressure, but it’s pressure nonetheless, and self-imposed at that – sometimes, that’s the worst kind. There are no easy answers, either, and no short cuts. I know what needs to be done – my head needs to bend to the grindstone, and no mistake. It’s lucky that I enjoy writing as much as I do, then; a shame, though, that pressure is the death of inspiration.

Maybe I’ll just start churning these out instead…
Image: romanceuniversity.org

In any case, those are the challenges (at least, the creative ones!) facing me this week, and for the rest of the month. Seven competitions and/or submission opportunities to enter, one little book to introduce to the potentially unwelcoming world, a children’s book conference to attend (which will be great fun, I hope), and desperate prayers that the stream of ideas and enthusiasm won’t dry up just yet to be said.

If all else fails, I’ll just go out and buy a copy of Dan Brown’s latest potboiler, which is being published today (as anyone into books will surely know); if he can do it, anyone can.

Not, of course, that I’m being sour-grapey, or anything…

Going With the Flow

It’s another cold day out there, but luckily not as bad as yesterday. It’s even beginning to brighten up just enough to look enticing, but it’s definitely a winter woollens sort of day, all the same.

Not that I can actually wear woollen gloves next to my skin, but you get the idea…
Image: scotweb.co.uk

Today, a lot of things are on my mind. I’ve been trying to pin down a topic for my blog post for the last hour or so, not sure of the direction I should take today. My mind’s been racing from one image to the next like my head was an old-fashioned movie projector, but eventually I realised that maybe that was what I should write my post about. Being kind to yourself on days when your brain just refuses to sit still, or co-operate, or function the way you want it to.

Yesterday, I also found my brain acting like this, and I gave myself such a hard time about it that I drove myself into a bad mood. I kept berating myself for not being able to function at 100%, so much so that I ended up standing in my own way and impeding what I was able to accomplish. I’m learning that when you’re the only person you have to get you (and keep you) motivated throughout the day, it’s really important to be on good terms with your brain. I’m not sure why my basic reaction when I don’t have all my cylinders firing first thing in the morning is to be angry with myself, but it’s the truth. So, it’s something I need to work on and help myself out with.

We all have days when things don’t go our way. Some days everything is so easy and effortless that life is a pure joy, but on other days everything we turn our hand to is a struggle. I know this is true – and not just for me – but it’s so easy to forget it. I tend to get so frustrated with my own slow reactions and fuzzy thinking on those hard days that I end up convincing myself nothing is worth the effort, which means a slow slump into unproductivity. This in turn means more chastising myself, which means the work I do produce is wrung out of me with ten times as much effort as it should have taken. It’s a completely ridiculous situation when I sit down and work through it in words. It’s a bit like shackling myself to a boulder and then expecting myself to run a marathon, and kicking myself when I can’t do it.

Fitted sheets are my nemesis. But I’ve learned to live with the fact that I will never be able to fold one. If only I could extend this to everything else in my life!
Image: imgur.com

It would be so much better to work with your brain and not against it at times like this, wouldn’t it? To be gentle with your thought processes and try to listen to what your brain is telling you. It will lead to better productivity, as well as better mental health, because struggling to accomplish something you just can’t manage at a particular point will (at least in my case) lead to total mental strangulation. Which isn’t, as you might’ve guessed, a lot of fun.

Yesterday, I managed to write three pieces of flash fiction, as well as my blog post, and draft an idea for a fourth short piece. Because I’m trying to build up a body of work for submissions, this is important work for me. Perhaps that’s the reason why my brain tends to freeze when I try to do it, and why I react with such frustration when things start to go wobbly inside my head. But the point is, I still managed to hit my target, despite doing my best to hobble my own efforts. I know I can do the work, but it would have been accomplished with a lot less strain if I’d just taken it easy on myself.

Is this a problem for other people too? I hope I haven’t come across as a total crackpot in this post! I have a feeling, though, that this process is one which will sound familiar to a lot of people; something else I’ve learned in recent times is that you’re very rarely alone when it comes to struggling with certain things. My resolution for today is to go with the flow of my brain, and let it set the pace. I’m going to listen to it and let it give me ideas for my short pieces, instead of treating it like a galley slave and whipping it until it produces the goods. I’ll let you know how I get on!

Happy Tuesday – I hope all is flowing perfectly for you today, whatever you’re doing.