Sunday Thoughts

What a difference a week makes. Last Sunday, I was still feeling shaky and ill after having fought the flu for a week.-and-a-half. While sipping Sprite and working very hard to keep food down is by no definition a vacation - for a few days there I felt too poorly even to read, and that's a crying shame - it did force me to take some time off from writing and editing. And posting and just...everything work related. It left me sad that I don't ever plan to take time off; that I don't allow myself to have breaks. It's part of a mindset in which I've become entrenched: that I don't deserve to take time off. This is a damaging way of thinking about the work/life balance, but one that's hard to shake. 

Forced or not, I took that break. And when I felt well enough to get back into DS edits, it was with the conscious decision that, even if writing is work, I deserve to enjoy that work. 

On Monday, I blogged about authenticty; about wanting to regain that openness and passion that marked my first years of published writing. I want to blog, I want to share photos; I want to share books. I did three things:

1) Threw out my daily word count. I got to a point in early 2017 when I began to feel like I couldn't possibly write enough to stay afloat, so I enforced a firm 2k word a day quota in the hopes of boosting my productivity. But, rather than work more efficiently, I felt hemmed in, and my creativity suffered. I started to dread the daily word count.

2) Shelved a project that just wasn't working. Sometimes, the order in which you thought you'd release books just isn't the order that maximizes your energy, and that was definitely the case for me. It's still there, still waiting, and hopefully in the future I can come back to it with a happy heart and a willing spirit. But, for now, setting it aside has done wonders for my mental logjam. I feel so much lighter; the words are just spilling out, and I want to write. 

3) I decided not to rush edits. Dragon Slayer is a massive book, and it deserves to be delicately picked through. 

Writing them out, these three steps seem almost silly in their simplicity. Each was a case of telling myself "it's okay, deep breaths." It's like there's this hourglass in the back of my mind, always about to run out of sand. And I can't think like that. I can't work like that. And, as I've reminded myself this week, taking some of the personal pressure off usually results in more words, rather than less. Being a workaholic means managing your motivation in a healthy way, and I'm trying to do a better job with that. 

This week I made good editing progress with DS:

“I heard you had a temper. It seems the rumors were true.”

“This is not my temper.”

“That’s true,” Stephen chimed in. Vlad could sense his anxiety, but his voice came calm and airy. “This is Vlad in a happy mood, your grace.”

And Golden Eagle is currently sitting at 13.4k words, which is farther along than I expected to be at this point! This book is going to be fun; it's a mix of found family, some rewarding and deep romance, developing friendships, and some of our more aimless characters finding voices for themselves. 

“I spoke with Dracula, Nik. Some. He’s violent, and he’s frightening – but he’s not like Rasputin was. He isn’t trying to trick anyone. Not that I could tell. He’s…he says there’s a war coming. A bad one.” He shuddered. “I don’t want anything to do with that. But.”

“But nothing,” Nikita said, finding some firm ground as last. Protectiveness he could do. Looking after Sasha, shielding him. He twisted in the booth, so they faced one another fully, and put a hand on Sasha’s shoulder, tight enough that his knuckles turned white, but Sasha didn’t flinch away from the touch.

“Sashka, listen to me.”

Sasha’s eyes widened.

“Whatever this war is, whatever those people” – he stabbed a finger toward the empty side of the booth across from them – “want to fight: that isn’t our business. It isn’t our fight. We lived through our war.” Flashes of memory: blood on snow, the cry of ravens, the stench of burned flesh. “It took its pound of flesh, and we don’t owe anyone anything. Do you hear me? Not a thing.”

He was panting through an open mouth, head swimming, heart hammering. Drowning in Sasha’s gaze.

Finally, Sasha blinked and turned his head away; nodded, hair slipping loose from behind his ear and swinging forward to shield his face. “That’s the thing about war, though,” he said, still soft. “It has a way of sweeping people up, whether they want to fight or not.”

***

I'm also working on a secret project that is a mix of a lot of story elements that I really love and which I probably won't be able to talk about in any detail for a while. 

On a reading front, I'm currently entrenched in this book, which I love. 

V.E. Schwab posted about listening to it on audio last year, and several other authors had already recc'd it, so I ordered the paperback with my last Amazon shipment. I finally started it while I was sick, and I've now ordered the whole rest of the series. It's kept me up several nights this week; a temptation I can't wait to get back to every time I set it down. I plan to do a write-up about it this week, but the quick rundown is: 16th century Scottish drama centered around a charismatic rogue who is in turns delightful, deadly, and tragic. It reads more like a classic than a modern novel, and for me, it's been a welcome distraction from real life. 

Hope everyone had a lovely weekend; hope the sun shone on you, at least a little.