Personally, I am seriously understaffed. I need to be about 5 of me. The only problem with that is I know those other four of me. They’re dorks (and each of them would think much the same of the other 4). None of them can organize their time, or delegate. And they all hate asking favors. Perhaps what I need is a wizard’s staff. Pretty glowing lights on the end, a tap or two and book writes itself, and edits itself, and proofs itself and gets a really magical cover. And it is good for banishing demons and leaning on too.

Unfortunately, the only ones I could find that I could afford were inscribed with ruins. Not even attractive ruins, but the kind of ruin with falling slates and mold on walls that you can’t even rent out in Australia in the present renal crisis, besides already being populated with eldritch horrors with insomnia and long leases. So: I have cope with getting a little more thin and stretched.

A part – a substantial part, is real life intruding on my writing. I feel rather like a test case for the psychologist who set about investigating whether high rates of depression and substance abuse caused poverty, and found that poverty was quite capable of producing depression on its own, and that substance abuse was often a response to that. Neither depression nor substance abuse made it any better — but kind of unsurprising. Ok, so far, the only substance I am abusing is coffee, but the long, expensive and utterly pointless war with petty bureaucrats has not helped ‘the black dog’, and that does not make me more creative or productive.

Another part is this doubt and uncertainty part: virtually by definition writers feels some degree of self-doubt. OK, the “I the bestestest riter what ever writted prowze ” types are common enough, and while this may be facade for some, faking it until they make it, for others it is the real thing. Maybe they are. But I figure if you become complacent and start phoning it in, you won’t get any better. Whereas those who doubt… well, they keep trying. The downside is that doubt can be debilitating. The slowness and uncertainty of our profession, likewise. Yes, sure, a few people can do 50K in a day. But for most a book is a slow progress and while self-publishing means you don’t add the glacial non-response of Trad Pub to it, it may still be a long-haul fight. To be blunt, not all of us thrive at that. Being a writer is not a battle. It’s a war. A long, drawn-out war.

So: yes. You do need a staff (even if that is just you, apportioning yourself). You need plans, goals, a strategy. This will not survive contact with the many enemies. You may well fail with such plans, but I certainly will not survive without them (You might. I can’t talk for you). My own war plans are the books I want to write (I have a list) and battle plans go to the details, and schedules (word counts. plans for release dates, covers, and I have to get to planning some marketing…) I wouldn’t mind a second me who was happy do all of this – or conversely, the real life stuff, but we’d argue about who got to do what. So: I try and divide myself. I have a ritual that I try put myself through to leave real life and write. When real life is particularly pressing or depressing or both, it doesn’t work. I find physical jobs and listening to audio books helps then. But I have to get back on the horse, re-schedule and push myself. Hopefully it breaks before I do. Or maybe I find the wizard’s staff, complete with runes that say bestseller, movie rights and happily ever after… nah. Not going to happen, but I will press on. I just wish I was as young and enthusiastic and energetic as at the start of the war.

Nil desperandum. Nil carborundum illigitimi!