Freelancer's Office

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I picked up lessons one and two quickly from memory of having taken them two years ago, so have advanced to lesson three of the How to Think Sideways course for this week.

I will still be building on the skills learned (and relearned) in lesson two as I work my way through lesson three and learn how to generate ideas while on a deadline. I remember doing this lesson, it was very fun and taught me a lot, so I can’t wait to dive back into it and work on getting some good ideas moving about that I will be able to work from.

Having taken this course before, I have a small advantage in some of the lessons I am able to consolidate and complete sooner than the usual two weeks to a month each.

That is the case with lessons one and two. I know the material already, so I just need to skim lesson one and dive into lesson two.

I really need lesson two right now, too. It helps to define what I will actually enjoy writing and how to find the right genera for me. That is something I need, because in the last year my preferences for what I like to read took a bit of a shift away from the fantasy novels I had grown up on. My friend defined it best I think in that we are more urban fantasy types now, but I need to consider if that is really what I enjoy writing and that is what lesson two is all about.

So, I will leave you to your writing now, and I will dive into lesson two of the How to Think Sideways writing course.

So, midlife crisis strikes and most people will go out and buy a sports car, or quit their job, or maybe get divorced. Me? I’m three days shy of the big four-oh and have come to the determination that I have to stop letting external influences sidetrack my dreams of being an author.

My mom never faltered in her belief that I would be a published author. She believed strongly in my writing, encouraged me to follow my dreams. There were more than a few months over the past six years when the only way that we got from month to month was by the margin I added to the month’s income from my writing work. And this came to be enough for me. My mom felt that I had made it as a writer when my writing earned enough money to pay the bills.

Still, I wanted to be a published novelist and she encouraged me to reach for that star.

After she passed away, in late 2008, I let my dreams slowly get snuffed out under the pressure of others and other needs. I worked at writing, kept working to pay the bills, but the dream to be a published novelist was a lost dream for well over a year now.

I am no longer going to be afraid to pursue my dream, my mother’s dream. I am going back to the How to Think Sideways course that I was a part of when my mom passed away. The course that she encouraged me to take, and take it over from the beginning. As I work my way through that course I will use this website to track my progress and share my thoughts on writing.

I would like to offer the most heartfelt of thank yous to Holly Lisle, the course creator, for creating the course and for giving me a chance to return to it all these months later to work my way back through it and move toward my and my mother’s dream of me being a published writer.

I have been suffering from a persistent funk that has left me uninterested in actually writing during the day. It has been miserably pitiful and seemed like an unending cycle that I was stuck in.

Sort of a writing depression I guess you could call it. I wanted to write, I really did, but I just could not get up the energy required to think of what I should be writing about, I certainly could not then summon the energy needed to actually write it.

I will not admit how long it took for me to realize I was in this state, but those that know me as a writer can likely make a good guess. A few days ago I realized it myself, and realized that something had to be done. Either I had to break free of this nasty cycle, or I had to give up being a writer and turn my energy toward another profession to help support me and my dad.

I can’t give up on writing. It is… me. I breathe it and think about it and just can not get along in a day if I can’t sit down and write. It is important to me.

So, how to end that funk? Well, the first step was to sort out the cause of the writing depression. That required a lot of thinking about why I was not getting my work done.

You might have a different determination, but my determination was: why work for nothing?

I was not doing volunteer work, I was working, but… the goal that I was working toward was something that seemed, at times, unattainable because of external factors that I knew were going to be working against me. Why bust my tail for 10 years to achieve nothing?

It just made no sense to me. So, since I knew that the cause of my depression was an inability to see where the hard work would achieve anything in the long run, my next goal was to find out how I could solve the issue.

For me, it was to talk to some people. I needed to sit down and get some things sorted out so that I had their word that my efforts were not going to be wasted. If I work myself to the point of collapse, they will not turn around down the road and kick things out from underneath me.

It is amazing how much just knowing that your siblings are going to support you rather than kick you as soon as you are down can change your outlook on stuff. I can’t say that the depression is entirely gone, but I at least feel more secure that my efforts are not going to be wasted. I would prefer to keep my health and have a social life, but I am giving up my health, social life, and a good percent of my sanity to make my writing work toward a long term security for myself. And now I have promises that it will not be for nothing if my siblings have any say in the outcome of things down the road.

Is it a cure? I’m not sure. But I do know that I feel better about writing at this time than I have in a very long time… since before my mom passed away.

If you have found yourself in a depression when you sit down to write, you might want to analyze what it is that causes the feelings and treat the lack of enthusiasm to write as a form if depression that requires careful analysis and specific steps to move through and beyond the writing depression.

Yesterday went by in a bit of a haze for me. By the time I looked up and realized that the day was half over it was pretty much over. Then I had to dash to the corner to get heater fuel and by the time I got back home and had the heater refueled the clock said it was well after midnight and all I wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep a few hours.