August was bad. Not for any specific external reasons aside from the oppressive heat, but because I could not get my head out of an existential mole-hole. Everything was vague and far away and meaningless; nothing got through to the internal chamber where I have willpower and feelings, nothing sounded appealing. Yes, this is a description of depression. I slept a lot, missed reasonable benchmarks for taking action, couldn't write much, probably gave bad advice and did a bad job as a friend. I likely missed an email or two, as well, so if you're waiting to hear from me, drop me a line.
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| pretty sure I'm going to buy this? |
Feeling better now that it's September, but I do have some residual don't-wanna hanging around. Mostly having to do with my next project, which will either be the Tom Paris book (have written >7K, didn't enjoy much of it) or the Paul Bern novel (have researched a good deal and taken notes).
As I said back in June, the only writing-related thing that sounded good all summer was lying on my back and thinking about the Bern book, taking no action on it, just thinking, agonized dreaming, like a lady on a chaise longue. I pushed into the Tom essays, mostly via self-nagging rather than the pleasure of writing. It did me good to complete some work, but it felt like writing instruction manuals, not essays. Finally, I asked Matt about this (not for the first time) (it's fun to be married to me) during a road trip we took over Labor Day, and he told me to write the project I wanted to write rather than the one I thought I should write.
There are so many reasons I shouldn't write the Bern book now, but all of them are practical, and the inspiration and passion I feel about it are not part of a practical calculus. So he's probably right. But my practical side keeps sowing doubt.
After my last post, I went on and did the revisions to the last section of the Casablanca book, which were agonizing but took less time than I thought. I gave it to new readers, they got back to me, and yesterday I did the final pass. Now I have to do all the surrounding stuff - synopsis, query letter, agent research, yadda yadda. I feel more ready to do all this than I did during August, but I don't even want to know who actually likes doing such annoying work. Not me.
I closed Barrelhouse reviews submissions for the month of August, the first time I've done this in the five years (!) I've been running the section. The submissions traffic I get there isn't too burdensome, but I was ready for a break anyway. It was the right move. Of course once I reopened them they started trickling in again immediately, like barely a few hours later. I don't want to express public annoyance about that, because it's not polite and also not completely correct (I feel good about doing the work, overall). But I have to say no so fucking often in that space, and the karma of that wears on me. It's never gotten nicer or easier to say no to subs that mean well but aren't suitable.
In about 10 days I'm going to the Midwest for a quick three-city tour: St. Louis, Oklahoma City, and Lawrence, Kansas, all in five days. If you live in any of these cities and want to say hi, let me know. I don't have any events planned - my planning for this trip mostly happened in dreaded August, and hence I messed up a lot of it - but I'm hoping to have some fun and see two cities I've never visited.
I'll be putting out a newsletter with some recent publications as soon as I get around to it, but otherwise that's the news. I'm so grateful August is over. I'm really looking forward to temperatures in the 80s. I keep putting words down, one after another.
