Still Bored

Thank the gods this day is finally drawing to a close. I've spent most of it chain smoking, which I should not be doing at all, and drinking too much coffee, which I also should not be doing and clicking back and forth between the same four internet sites where nothing is happening, waiting for my computer to do some amusing trick. I'm cross and brain-dead, and I don't feel like doing anything, yet doing nothing has no appeal either. I want to go shopping in the worst way, and I have no money. I want a new phone. Someone needs to drop $50K on my head, please. I could really put it to good use. Like, paying off my debts and then taking M. on a romantic vacation somewhere nice. Even a trip to Boulder would be good. We could walk around and drink lattes and eat food. I mean, I eat food here, every day, but it's not the same.

How do I manifest a change in my life? Well, not so much in my life as in my financial situation. I pretty much like my life, but the money sucks big hairy moose wang. Why must I always be poor? Other people make money. I've never been any good at it. It's all I can do to hold down a miserable, minimum wage job, the kind where at the end of the day you think you'd really rather starve to death than do THAT again.

I need to sell a book. I'm terrible at selling myself. I just don't seem to get the right hook. I can't attract the right attention. Is that because I'm uncomfortable with attention, due to my FOO? Quite possibly.

I wonder where Caitlin and Timber went? They were living in my head for months and now I can't find them at all.

Bleah.

Bored, Tired, Mad, Frustrated

The title of this post about says it all.

I'm really frustrated with my current lack of ability to write. It's doubly hard, coming, as it does, after my really great and productive spring. Right now I feel like I'll never be able to write again, and like I maybe had three good novels in me and that was all.

Or maybe it's just because I'm so tired. I don't sleep well. This didn't bother me much when I was writing, because I felt so jazzed about the work that getting five to six hours of sleep didn't deter me. But now I'm just dragging all the time. I long for a good seven or eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

M. says I need a break anyway because I've been working so hard. But I hate taking this break...it's like some kind of enforced lay-off. It's BORING not being able to write. I like living my life in my created worlds. Not being able to access it/them is like being cut off from my own heart.

Gods, I'm tired.

Some Stuff

Still stalled on the current project, which is no longer called The Strayaway Child. I don't know what it's called, actually. I got a new idea for how to look at the plot which changed quite a bit and entailed me culling another two and a half chapters, and now that title is no longer suitable. I know what happens next, but I'm having trouble contacting my antagonist and figuring out who she is, really. This is odd for me. I tend to write really character-driven work, and having no idea of the character but a pretty good idea of the plot is a 180-degree switch.

FWIW, if anyone reading this would like to check out The Unquiet Grave and She Moved Through the Fair, both have been uploaded in their entirety at Authonomy.com.

Here:
http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=22210

And Here:
http://www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx?bookid=22518

I'd appreciate it if you decide to take a look, if you'd register and leave a comment. It doesn't take long, and it's free.

The cat is screaming.

And the weather sucks, too.

Rain today. I was hoping to get some writing done--I actually managed a little yesterday--but I've been just grumpy and irritable all day and I can't settle to anything. Everything just makes me cross and mad.

I feel like I'm waiting for something. Waiting for everything to align so that I can move on with my life. I'm so tired of it. Waiting to have enough money. Waiting to get back in the groove. Waiting for things to be ready.

I had a tarot reading the other day that essentially said, "Stop waiting and act," but there are so many reasons that would not necessarily be a good idea.

Bleah.

In Search of My Brain

Maybe it's just that I'm tired.

I am tired. I haven't slept well in almost a year. For the last six months I've only slept about six hours a night maximum, with numerous gettings-up and wanderings around the house along the way. And I have ceased to be able to take meaningful naps. So I'm really, really beat.

But in spite of that, during the later part of February, March and April, I experienced the most heightened state of creativity that I've ever known. And then, the second week of May, it stopped.

I was about 400 pages into the fourth Caitlin Ross book, The Strayaway Child. For this book, I had a wonderful set up and not real plot. So I invented one. 400 pages into the book, I realized the plot didn't make any sense, so I axed about 200 pages and came up with a new plot. This plot makes sense, but it fails to excite me. I can't find the emotional resonance, the hook that keeps me writing, wanting to find out how it all turns out just like any reader. I wrote about 100 pages, realized I was stalling and nothing I had written advanced the plot and axed that, too. I started again. I wrote two chapters, realized my characters were not acting right, and axed them. Now I'm stuck 2/3 of the way through chapter 13 and I can't find it in me to go on. I know what happens. I just can't get there.

I hope it's just that I'm tired and if I take some time off, it'll come back to me. Because otherwise I'm stuck with the idea that I've set up a book that I just don't give a shit about.

Yes, I'm Alive...

Shortly after my last post, I drowned.

Not in a bad way. In a wave of creativity. In the course of about 3 months, maybe a little less, I entirely rewrote The Unquiet Grave, wrote the rough draft for She Moved Through the Fair, wrote another rough draft for the third book in the Caitlin Ross series, A Maid in Bedlam, and started the draft of the fourth book, The Strayaway Child. Not sure how many words that actually comes to, but not including the rewrites of TUQG, I barfed out about 1200 pages. More, really, because 400 pages into The Strayaway Child I got stuck and decided my plot didn't work and scrapped about 200 pages.

Then, not far into May, the impulse just kind of faded. I'm still working on The Strayaway Child, but in a kind of desultory way, when I feel like it, which does not seem to be often these days. My mind and energy are taken up with other things. I have a lot of energy, actually; it just doesn't seem to be geared toward writing for some reason. I know I should probably keep plugging away, but I've never been one of those people who can sustain an effort when the emotional resonance to the work is absent.

So I've been:
Cleaning the house (SHOCK)
Trying to get out more instead of staying locked in my office all the time
Planning on quitting smoking for real this time
Listening to more music
Playing music

Some other shit.

That's all.

BTW, why are all these people posting weird comments in Chinese on my blog?