I don’t claim to understand this. It smacks too much of woo and I don’t like woo.
Besides it disagrees fundamentally with the person I think I am.
Let me explain: the sort of person I think I am is more of a craftsman than an artist. I think I’m the sort of person who understands business. I think I know well enough to continue series that sell, to push on things that are obviously easy sales, that–
Would you please stop laughing? It’s really loud and it will scare the cats.
I guess you went over to Amazon and saw that the longer running series have been dormant for a few years, that I have a bunch of first books with no sequels and that far from sticking to what are — obviously — the highest selling genres and subgenres I insist on writing things like… Space opera that is not mil sf. A genre that the big publishing houses decided didn’t exist and therefore more or less buried twenty years ago, meaning there is no ready made readership for it.
Look, it’s not who I want to be.
And in my defense, a lot of the appearance of flakiness came from trad pub tendency to willy nilly terminate series if you didn’t automagically become a best seller despite lack of support or active working-against. Then making you pick up something completely different and maybe for good measure change your name (again.)
But that’s not all, no.
I’ve found, and you can’t begin to guess how much this upsets up, that if I force myself to write “the next thing” right on schedule, as I should, it takes effort, and that depletes… well, whatever the hell it is writing feeds on. (No, I don’t know what it is. if I did, I could control it.)
Recently, very recently, I found that one way to revert it, to find the energy is to write something I want to write. Today it was a story wildly out of sequence and which can’t come out for a while. But it recharged me, and that serves its own purpose. And now I can do the sensible thing and finish the book waiting to be finished.
Why does it work?
I don’t know. Magic? the perversity of the mind?
Or perhaps, just perhaps, our ability to right is connected to our ability to play. It is a ludic activity, meaning an activity related to playing, to fun.
And sometimes we need to let the writing thing play for to play, before we can discipline it into work.
I wonder if professional musicians and professional painters have a similar mechanism. Does anyone know?
At any rate, it seems like a useful thing to know. And maybe a way to continue some of those series and to improve my — and maybe your? — productivity.
It’s worth a try.
Mad Genius Club 
10 responses to “Recharging”
I love writing. It recharges me. (Wish I’d discovered it sooner.) But if I have too many lurking unfinished/unaddressed household/survival tasks looming over me, it’s simply too distracting. I’m at one of those life-change points where I have got to get some of my ducks in a row rather better (before I forget what ducks are), and the urgency spoils the anticipated pleasure of writing. I swear… just a few more months to reorient, please.
I look forward to getting those ducks marching a bit better down the road so I can put them in the pond in the back of my mind to get on with it and stop bothering me.
I ALWAYS have way too much hanging over me. Yes, at some point it overwhelms my ability to function. Until then, I have to cope with what I have.
Kind of like running a race with asthma. And a wooden leg. And the other stuck in a sack. And a horde of curious kitties winding about your legs. And some bloke coming around to try and get you to buy his new, totally not stole kitsch, at the same time.
But you’re determined and bloody minded enough to finish the race, even if you come in last, even if the sun goes down first. Every inch is a win, at that point. Get those inches.
Indeed. Those your last sentence made my inner 13 year old boy giggle….
Well, I *was* a thirteen year old boy at one point, so I know what I’m aiming at Sister Sarah. *grin*
Same thing here. I was afraid the space regency and the book binding and messing around with Claude Ai was going to interfere with Main Project, but so far they haven’t really. Mind gets bored, Mind wants to do something else. Nothing woo about it, unless we import the woo in our metaphors for it.
I need to bounce, in part to keep fresh for Day Job, in part because the Writer Brain seems to need variety. I’ve got two active series at any time, and then the SQUIRREL! stuff that gets written down so it doesn’t take over. It seems to help me stay fresh, for lack of a better word.
Sometimes, tyops spark thoughts.
I know you mean write.
But… maybe it’s connected to “right,” as in “ability to do what’s right,” too.
My family says the way you play is the way you live….
write, yes. I’m so tired.
If I didn’t get delight from it, I wouldn’t say a thing. 😀