On Not Being Able to Write

There's been a lot of ink expend- ed on the joys of writing, on the fears of writer's block, on the writing life and on all things writers, but there is one topic that I have not seen, and I don't know if it has been addressed in regards to writers or not. It can be misinterpreted as writer's block, but it's something more insidious. It's called writer's doldrums.

What? You never head of it? It's when you have stuff to write. You have your essays, your short stories, your novel, your blog entry, and you don't feel like writing any one of them. You feel like your life is not about writing them, going over them, editing them. In fact, you don't feel like writing anything, not even a letter to your mom. You want to write nothing.

I have a trilogy to finish, and I'm on the third book. How the other two came to life is beyond me. I've written it in a white hot heat of creativity. Strange, life was breathed into two of the books without effort. I had a lot to say, and it came out like an vomination. But halfway into the third book, I drained out. I got tired and I drained out. There is nothing left inside and my drive has withered away. I have other things to write, but none of them feel as important to do as my third novel. So, everything slumps. It's as if my third novel is an obstruction in the colon.

So now I don't feel like writing. I don't feel like writing anything. And I know what you are thinking: If I tried to write something, anything, I just might free my creativity to go ahead and finish my novel. But that won't work. Simple as that. Why do I say this? Because I am writing this blog entry and I haven't the drive to much do that. I'm only dragging ass to get through this. I'm not feeling it, but because it's a near enough, ardent enough feeling, I felt that writing it now would be a good thing. I can be close to the emotions and place them down on paper as accurately as possible.

Writer's doldrums. A state of being where you are simply not in the mood to write anything. You look at what you've written and it seems trite and boring. You can breathe no life into anything. All of your work and doing is pointless because it seems so wrong. So as your only option, you chose to do nothing until it passes. Whatever the case, you do nothing.

So how do you reverse this? How do you get out of the doldrums and back into productive creativity? You can't. Just like writer's block, that leads to a Sargasso Sea of nothingness, you have a painful road of busted glass and sharp, rusty objects to traverse. Something not easily done. So what do you want me to tell you? I have nothing to say. I can't see a way out of the doldrums. I can see no options other than to ride it out. This blog may seem to be an instructional, and I may seem to speak as if I know what I'm talking about and have all of the answers but the truth is is that I don't have anything to give but my limited experiences. I am one human with one life and that doesn't account for much.

So, I'm stopping to write this blog post, hoping to start a spark, or to place a fire under my ass. But I'm grinding to the end of this post and I feel exactly the same, uninspired. I have no desire to write any further, and because of this feeling, I know that the doldrums will still go on.

If I find a way out, I'll let you know in some later post. Till then, as long as you can, keep writing.

Gregory

On Waiting on Decisions

I've never been too patient a man.

Ever. Even when Christ- mas was around the corner, I used to sit at the tree studying the gifts to see if they would give away any secrets as to what they contained. I would have given anything for x-ray vision, but I had to wait.

The process of book publishing is somewhat of a waiting game too. These things do not hurry and they aren't influenced by sales or discounts. I say this because I got an email today how BookBaby.com is coming down on their prices for a short time. If you purchase a book package, you'll get an e-book package added in at a little extra charge, and vice versa. But the truth is is that BookBaby.com wants your business. But can they move ahead my timetable? No. Not at all, because as I had agreed, JP can start work on my manuscript at her leisure. I'm certain that the expansive reach of some .com doesn't jar her from bed an onto my writing. She is closing down her present clients and is going ahead with mine in time.

So what do I so while I'm waiting? What can I do. Play with my fingers, play games, play with my Playstation 3 or cook a lot. I'm not a good cook, and I can only get so far with Max Payne3 before I start to loose my edge and make stupid mistakes. But you know what I am....I am a writer and this is what I want to do with my life. I want to write for a living, so I write. I write and I write hard. I am a son of a bitch with the written word. So with that being said, I took the characters from the manuscript that I gave JP and began fleshing out another story.

It started to take shape, then form and then life. I poured myself into it and in a shorter time than I have ever had, I had finished the manuscript. Then I stopped back and edited it for the first time. A double whammy in a month. I've worked up a sequel for a story that I never thought I would write a sequel for. Here's another joke, or travesty of life. This story, Cover of Darkniss is one of those stories that I sat down and put together. It was a Noir piece, which everyone hates. It has thin characters and the only reason why it has a twist in it is because, frankly, I was bored in the direction that the story was going in. But after the twist, things became difficult for my simple detective story, which made my ears perk up and my juices start to flow. It cruised along now, bubbling with steam. It was unique, crisp, and written without so much literary weight that I usually put on many of my stories, making it an easier read than most of my stuff.

I packaged it and sent it out to traditional publishers and agents...well, the truth is, and anyone that's a writer can attest to, I sent out a fucking QUERY letter to agents and publishers. Query letters that are demanded to be shorter and shorter as if a good book can be conveyed to someone else in a page or less? Have you ever heard a person speak well about a book that they have just read? They literally gush over it, and yet, publishers and agents want you to get to the point in four sentences or less. How is that giving my MANUSCRIPT a fighting chance? How does that give all the nuances, the twists, the turns, the tension building scenes a voice to be understood and heard?

I'm tired of the Publisher/Agent bullshit now, and I hope that individual publishing takes off and allows the fans to read through your books and see if they want them or not. Let the people who want to enjoy it, take the time to evaluate it before purchasing it. So, Cover of Darkniss was not my best project, not my dream project, or the project that I felt would make me a household name, but it was the project worthy enough to become a victim of vanity press if this is what BookBaby.com was. But it was also a good enough manuscript to hit the market if people began purchasing and reading it. It's entertaining, which is the entire point of writing. To entertain the reader from page to page.

So the first part of the manuscript has been sent off to JP whom I'm am waiting for word on. Hopefully sometime in August? That would be nice. But now I'm sitting on the sequel, and like I told you about my early Christmases, I can't take waiting. As I was searching for JP I met up with another editor with similar qualifications. LV. LV was sad that she didn't get my project, but she did say to contact her again if I get any further projects.

Would it be crazy to go ahead and work on two books at the same time and have them published nearly back to back on BookBaby.com or all of their distributing outlets. That might not be good, that might not be bad. I'm just going to do what I do best right now to kill time.

I'm going ahead and write the third part of the trilogy.

Gregory