Flux In-capacitator

It's not about standing still and becoming safe. If anybody wants to keep creating they have to be about change.
— Miles Davis

Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
— Barack Obama

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have found in traveling in a stage coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.
— Washington Irving

Change is painful, but nothing is as painful as staying stuck somewhere you don’t belong.
— Mandy Hale

You’ve probably noticed I’ve been pretty scattered lately. I feel like I’m in flux, like I’m going through some kind of inner change. And I really hope that when I come out on the other side everything will settle into place.

I know they say that change is good, and that a change is as good as a rest, but I don’t like change. I never have. And these last few years with the pandemic and all have been nothing but change.

I get overwhelmed easily when there are too many changes and my go-to to escape (as you also may have noticed) is to crack open a book and just hide in there. Living in a world someone else has created is so much easier than dealing with reality.

Albert Einstein once said, “The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” If that’s true then I guess my intelligence is also in flux. Some days I can handle change better than others, but throw too much change at me too quickly and back I dive into the safety of a book. Like I did this week.

At least I was reading new books instead of clinging to the comfort of old ones. Of course, that had the downside of having a harder time to put them down than I would with familiar ones. Bottom line is, I really need to find a better way of dealing with stress than reading. And don’t say crafts, because it was doing cross stitch that sent me there in the first place.

What’s brought things to a head (so to speak) is that I was looking up some information on an author who’s fairly new to me, and I was a little taken aback at what I found. This woman has published 150 books in 12 years. One hundred and fifty! Even if she started writing 10 or even 20 years before that first one was published, that’s still a lot of books.

I know you should never compare yourself to another author and I’m really not – while I enjoy reading her books, they’re not the kind of book I’d write – but I still can’t help feeling like a bit of a slacker.

I was whining about this telling a friend about this and she wisely pointed out that writers that are this prolific – Lynsay Sands, Nora Roberts, Christine Feehan, Eve Langlais, Debbie Macomber, and their ilk – have made writing their job.

Writers like my friend and I have other sources of income. We started writing because we wanted to, not because we had to. Of course, there’s a whole argument to be had on the urge to “have to write” and not having a choice, but that would be a post for another day.

But the point was made. I started writing because I wanted to, not because I have to. No one is pointing a gun to my head, I don’t need to write to keep from starving, I write by choice, not necessity. And if the writing doesn’t get done? No big deal. There’s always tomorrow. Those other writers? It’s their job and they treat it as such.

So maybe that’s what I need to do. Treat my writing like a job. At first it might be more of a part time one with flexible hours, but I need to have set hours to be in my office and stick to them. And if something interrupts me, like a medical appointment, then I’ll need to make up those hours later.

And maybe once I’ve got my schedule figured out, I can include it in my wordage report – time spent in my office and what I accomplish.

This all sounds good in theory, let’s see if I can put it into practice.

* ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ *

WORDAGE REPORT

This was just one of those weeks that was filled with distractions, and Friday was such an incredibly bad day that I think I’d just rather forget all about it.

Skipped Monday’s blog post, got the rest up, even Fiction Friday although I didn’t start a new serial. I kinda got overwhelmed by life. It happens, but it still sucks when it does.

NEW WORDS:
Blog Posts – 1,760+430+949= 3,139
Poetry – 430 (included in blog post)
Other words – 0 (though not for lack of wanting to)

Total words: 3,139

Three-minute words – 0

Goals For Next Week:
Get my s**t together.

EDITING:
29 pages
Not as much as I’ve been doing in the previous weeks, but I’ll take it. The more I work on Magickal Mayhem, the more I want to get it done. If for no other reason than I can start working on something else. :-D

Goal For Next Week:
Keep up the good work on Magickal Mayhem.

MARKETING MONDAY:
Nope, once again it just didn’t happen.

Goal For Next Week:
Submit two flash stories and one poem.

TECHNO TUESDAY:
I might have to reconsider this whole techno Tuesday thing. I mean yeah, this is stuff I need to work on, but I haven’t been and what purpose does it serve to highlight my failure to do so week after week?

Goal For Next Week:
Do something technical or educational (like access one of my tutorials).

POETRY WEDNESDAY:
I enjoyed the Linking Pin Sonnet more than I thought I would, especially given my dislike of sonnets in general. I received a very nice email from the creator of it, thanking me for helping to spread the word about his form, but he never mentioned whether he liked my example or not. ;-)

Goal For Next Week:
Find a new form to share on my Wednesday blog post.

CRAFTING:
I finished that devil spawn of a cross stitch and made my needle book. My sister and several ladies in my stitchery guild tell me that cross stitch is very relaxing to work on – I beg to differ. I found it incredibly slow and frustrating, especially when I was working with metallic thread. I might even do a ranty post about it for Monday.

I’ve got a couple of big projects lined up, so I can’t let myself be distracted by the little stuff. One of them is a ball gown for my 7-year-old granddaughter to wear to the father/daughter ball at the end of the month. That’ll be my first priority. And the second is a baby quilt that just needs to be sewn together.

Goal For Next Week:
Figure out, once and for all, if my sewing machine needs to be replaced. Start work on the granddaughter’s dress.

WHAT I’M READING:
Oops! Looks like I went back to the other extreme again. Remember those last four books from the Freakin’ series, by Eve Langlais, I got? Yeah, well, I read them. All of them – Human and Freakin’, Jungle Freakin’ Bride, Freakin’ Cougar, and Freakin’ Out. Then I started on a three-in-one book called Hunger and I read The Alpha’s Mate, by Eve Langlais, Dangerous Passions, by Kate Douglas, and Bound to the Wolf, by A.C. Arthur.

Guess we know one of the reasons I didn’t get much done last week. :-D

No reading on the Paperwhite. (Gee, I wonder why?)

Goal For Next Week:
Stop buying Eve’s books. Stop ignoring the Paperwhite.

GOAL REVIEW:
I spent a lot of time last week trying to get my head into writing, but not succeeding very well. Hence the excessive amount of reading. This included a couple of out-of-town day trips, some serious family stuff, and I took myself to the movies to see Dr. Strange.

Friday I must have really pissed off the bad luck fairy because it was just one thing after another. I missed Monday’s post, but I got the others up, and on time. Didn’t start a new serial story, but I did write a new poem.

Finished that annoying little cross-stitch and got my needle book made. Did a bunch of mending for my father-in-law too, but while time consuming, I guess that doesn’t really count.

I’m really hoping that once I get things sorted out, treating my writing like a job, keeping regular hours, I’ll be able to report more successes than failures. Guess we’ll see.

Happy writing.