Afternoon, squiders. I have written in all sorts of new places this week. (Well, done writing-adjacent things. Submitted queries. Wrote this and Tuesday’s blog posts. Did my critiques for the marathon. No actual writing.)
Right now I am at a library that I occasionally visited as a kid (it was the main branch of the library system my home library was in, so sometimes we had to travel afield) which is a bit weird, as I haven’t been here in decades, but it’s apparently five minutes from my office. There is something that looks suspiciously like microfiche or a card catalog in the back corner, and I am going to have to go look at it for my own curiosity here in a minute.
But I’ve also tried two new coffee shops. (Also near work, because my youngest is in camp around there and it doesn’t make sense to go home and then come back between when I get off and when camp gets out.) Generally I work at the same coffee shop, but I think I may actually work better in new places. Wonder why.
ANYWAY.
On Tuesday we talked about the idea of morning pages. We’re on day 4 of that, and we’ve already failed the “morning” part of the idea. Yesterday I did them at, like, 10 pm, because I’d slept extremely poorly the night before and didn’t get up early enough to do them before we had to leave. Today I think I was catching up on sleep, so again I didn’t get up early enough. (I did them here at the library.)
I’ve been working through the same scene for the past three days, which I also suspect is Not the Point, but also these are for me and I should do with them what I want, but I did want to, you know, experiment. Focus on specific things such as tone or mood. Maybe try some poetry because I’m awful at it unless it’s like, a limerick.
So I am annoyed that I am falling into my same shenanigans. But the month is still early, and on we persevere.
Speaking of persevering, God, submission can be a drag. Also critique. I thought I’d dodged my “why did I become a writer again?” depression when the retreat went so well, but I had two queries rejected within hours yesterday, and the one critique I got on the marathon thus far hated my first chapters even though my in-person group had liked them.
(I revised between the two, so now I’m wondering if I ruined something. Also a bad feeling. I sent the revised chapter back to the in-person group with the note that if they have the time/inclination could they please tell me if I changed something for the worse or if this is a subjective thing. We’re meeting on Sunday anyway.)
I wonder if it ever gets easier. I’ve been writing and submitting for a long time, so in general I don’t spiral about rejections, but every now and then they still hit hard. But I wonder if there’s a point where you’re successful enough that you can just brush it off all the time.
But on we go, writing our silly little worlds with our silly little characters. The writing itself is still fun, despite everything else.
I hope you have a lovely weekend, squider, and I’ll see you next week!
