October books: 5/5 (Probable Caws)
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In full disclosure, the red is notebook paper and not a card; the last of the small, non-rolodex cards I have are yellow, and I’m not sure how they’ll photograph compared to the rolodex cards I’m using for Ryland. However, I kind of hate the vertical vs. horizontal picture orientation so maybe we’ll use them anyway. But I only have, like, three, so choices must be made. Ah well.
Anyway.
So, after all that handwringing last week, how was the convention?
It was fine. Good, even! And now I find myself wondering why I got so anxious about the whole thing.
(To be fair, though, Friday afternoon when I first got there, I was quite overwhelmed. But I eventually found an emotional support extrovert and hung out for her for about half an hour, and then it was smooth sailing from there.)
I think I mentioned that the con moved to a location twice as far from me than it used to be, so I stayed at the con location all weekend this year. On one hand, this allowed me more control over when I arrived/left the con, but on the other, it gave me almost too much freedom. Late night!Kit cannot be trusted.
(Friday night I decided to go to the social deduction games, which started at 9pm. I played two near perfect rounds of Werewolf Legacy–including one as a werewolf where I had at least two people tell me that I was the only person they trusted, and managed to keep another werewolf, an 11-year-old girl, from getting ousted–and then should have gone to bed, as it was 11:45pm, but was talked into another game that they swore would be “fast” and ended up taking two hours, and would have gone longer if I hadn’t thrown the game so we could go to sleep.)
My panels went well across the board, I made friends with the other author at the autograph table, who lives about ten minutes from me, bought some dragon/D&D themed coffee, and generally had a good time.
I was not especially productive. I did write the opening 1000 words to the generation ship story on Sunday, but otherwise got nothing done. In past years, I’ve written whole short stories, edited chapters, drawn and colored pictures, etc. This is interesting to me, as I thought that being onsite would give me more working time, as I wasn’t dealing with family things at home in that time period. The late nights definitely didn’t help with that, and I did have to work harder to find food, but still interesting.
I spent some time on Saturday talking to my friend Shannon Lawrence about a number of things, including writing and neurodivergence and whatnot. She brought up burnout, and now I can’t get it out of my head. Is the reason I haven’t been terribly productive the last few years due to burnout? Productive writing wise, I mean. Or creatively at all. I know about burnout, I’m pretty sure there’s a section about it in my Writing Around Life book, but I haven’t thought about it too much beside that.
It could explain things. It could explain a lot. But I don’t honestly know how to fix it, if that’s what it is. And not, like, writing burnout, I don’t think, though it’s a possibility. But burnout from everything else, which is why when I do have free time I want to do something mindless, like play a phone game or watch TV.
I’m going to have to sit and do some thinking. It’s not like I can turn off the kids or the world. Is the solution to drop the writing for a while, to not even try? I sat next to a woman at a table for a couple hours on Saturday morning, who had just put out her first book and was aggressively marketing it, and had been for a few months, doing signings and conventions and Internet ads, etc. And I sat there and thought to myself–I used to do that. But when was the last time I actively marketed anything? The mere thought makes me want to shut down. I’m still going through the motions, with the blog here, and submitting short stories and queries, and making writing plans that don’t ever seen to go anywhere. But I used to blog three days a week, and submit things every month, and it all just falls farther and farther apart.
(I’m realizing that listening to sad Halloween music as I write this is maybe not the best idea. We’re getting too far into the feels.)
And maybe that is the solution, to take a break. Maybe that was the solution months ago, years ago. I didn’t use to write all the time. But I think over time expectations were set. You have to post regularly, or you get lost in the void and everyone forgets you. Real writers write every day. Things along those lines.
Not sure what I’m saying.
Not sure what the solution is.
Over the next week I hope to find time to sit and think things through. Free write maybe. I’ll let you know what comes out of that, what, if any, decisions are arrived at.
Happy Halloween, squiders, do something fun that refreshes your soul.
