I’ve had a lot of busy weekends in the last two months. With the new baby, a writing conference, a bunch of signings, panels, and talks, and of course getting hit by a car while crossing the street…yeah, things have been somewhat crazy over here.
And while I’ve been keeping up with my promotional goals, blogging, and Theme of Absence, I have been feeling quite a bit, hmm, down lately about writing. I really found myself in that weird, somewhat frustrating, place where I’m spending a whole bunch of time “being a writer” but very little time actually writing.
Now don’t get me wrong. All of that other stuff is totally important and does help inch toward my overall writing goals, but writing also needs to be part of that. It’s actually the biggest part. And even though I sit there and sometimes scream “Goals! Goals! Goals!” until I’m blue in the face, I often fail to meet some of the basic writing goals I set for myself.
So this weekend I did three things to help make me feel like I can (and will) continue making progress as a writer and also to remind myself that no matter how busy or stressful things get, writing by itself does not have to suffer.
1. Resubmitted some rejected short stories
I should add that revision (or at least heavy editing) was part of that resubmitting as well. I don’t have a ton of stories pending, but I have gotten lax about resubmitting them as rejections or non-responses came in. So I spent a fair amount of time on the edits Friday night and then resubmitted four unpublished stories on Saturday.
And wow. Editing and submitting stories? It was almost like I was a writer again 🙂
2. Reopened an unfinished short story
And speaking of being a writer again, I actually worked on something new this weekend. By “new” I guess I just mean an unfinished first draft of something. It’s a 6500 word horror story that still needs an ending. I actually have the ending summarized in the manuscript, in order to make it work I need to rewrite perhaps a fourth of the story. But still, pulling out that piece and marking it up was the most fun I’ve had writing this year so far.
3. Worked on a guest post for another writing site (my first attempt at freelancing)
Who says writing is all about fiction, right? I know I write a lot of “non-fiction” with all the blogging, but I’ve never tried my hand at writing for someone else, unless you count the 2-3 years I wrote a weekly column for a pro-wrestling site years ago. And while the wrestling thing was a lot of fun, by writing for someone else I actually mean “freelancing.” I’ve been blogging here since the beginning of 2015 and before that on my author site for a few years. I figure that experience has helped me enough to delve into the world of freelancing. I worked on a first draft of a freelance post that I’ll hopefully shop around later this week. We’ll see how that one goes and once it’s published, you’ll be the first to know.
Finally….
I’ll say, I was mildly frustrated about stuff when the weekend started, but as the weekend closed, I went to bed with a renewed confidence and a much better feeling about my writing.
So thanks for listening to my little rant here. Sometimes it helps to just get this stuff out.
What do you do to get yourself back on track as a writer when you feel like you’re falling behind? Leave a comment and let us know!
