Spring Awakening (Anne Stuart)
posted by Anne Stuart
on
Monday, January 21, 2008
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Well, not actual spring. We're getting a high of 15 degrees and a low of 4, and we get snow in early May, so I'm not looking for any crocuses or tulips in the near future. But I'm coming back to life, creatively, and that's the most important thing of all.
I had a bit of a downturn this fall. I won't go into details -- everyone's got horror stories about the business, everyone's had disasters that they bounce back from.
Since I've been published since I was 25 (not counting my initial foray into paid journalism when I was seven) I've been through more disasters than most. And with this latest one I wasn't sure I was coming back. I mean, your heart can only be broken so many times before you just walk away.
But I'm back! The ideas are flowing - I have at last five solid ideas for a new book, I feel re-energized and hopeful, ready to concentrate on the story since I can't do anything about the business. And there are a number of things I can thank for it.
1. Collaborating with Jenny Crusie and Lani Diane Rich. If you've got the huevos for it, collaboration can teach you so many things, help you look at craft in an entirely different way. The only way to survive 30-some years as a writer is to keep evolving, and writing with the two of them (even if I occasionally got defensive) is a fabulous way to bring back the juice.
2. More sunlight always helps. It was pitch dark at 4:30 pm in December. Now we've got at least another half hour of sun, and I can feel it in my soul.
3. Time. You can only sulk for so long. Or let's say I can only sulk for so long. Then it's time to shake things up, move ahead, and fall in love again. (With a story -- I'll keep my husband).
4. Oh, changing your meds might help as well.
So I'm ready for a new year, a brave new world. Ready for new stories and whatever life will bring me.
How do you guys get through disasters? Got any tips for when this happens again? Because one thing I know about publishing -- it'll happen again.
I had a bit of a downturn this fall. I won't go into details -- everyone's got horror stories about the business, everyone's had disasters that they bounce back from.
Since I've been published since I was 25 (not counting my initial foray into paid journalism when I was seven) I've been through more disasters than most. And with this latest one I wasn't sure I was coming back. I mean, your heart can only be broken so many times before you just walk away.
But I'm back! The ideas are flowing - I have at last five solid ideas for a new book, I feel re-energized and hopeful, ready to concentrate on the story since I can't do anything about the business. And there are a number of things I can thank for it.
1. Collaborating with Jenny Crusie and Lani Diane Rich. If you've got the huevos for it, collaboration can teach you so many things, help you look at craft in an entirely different way. The only way to survive 30-some years as a writer is to keep evolving, and writing with the two of them (even if I occasionally got defensive) is a fabulous way to bring back the juice.
2. More sunlight always helps. It was pitch dark at 4:30 pm in December. Now we've got at least another half hour of sun, and I can feel it in my soul.
3. Time. You can only sulk for so long. Or let's say I can only sulk for so long. Then it's time to shake things up, move ahead, and fall in love again. (With a story -- I'll keep my husband).
4. Oh, changing your meds might help as well
So I'm ready for a new year, a brave new world. Ready for new stories and whatever life will bring me.
How do you guys get through disasters? Got any tips for when this happens again? Because one thing I know about publishing -- it'll happen again.
Patricia Potter
Tara Taylor Quinn
Maggie Shayne
Anne Stuart
Suzanne Forster
Lynn Kerstan
9 Comments :
I'm going through a dark period myself. Sales are falling. The publisher put an eight dollar price tag on my books while shrinking the type to unreadable size. I see disaster around the corner.
But like Krissie, I've gone through any number of ups and downs during a twenty-year plus career and couldn't survive unless I believe there's always sunshine around the corner. In fact, such setbacks usually force me to take a new direction which is often a good thing.
I have never had the trials and heart breaks authors have to go through but I can feel your pain & frustration. When the bad times roll around remember your readers love you!
Hugs, Krissie and Pat. The business is tough, and we're all feeling it. Like both of you, my careers issues have been affected by some very tough life issues, but I too have a new idea that's calling to me, and somehow that always pulls me out of the dive.
New ideas are Prozac for writers!
Suz
I think we're all struggling a bit. Life issues get in the way of the writing. The business gets in the way of the writing. The trick is to find the writing in the mist of it all. We're writers. The joy of creating, of living intimately with the voices, bringing them to life, is what sustains us. I just found this out myself as I struggled to find a way to the words that free me. I have a book in a few weeks and couldn't get words to come. I have another deadline immediately following that one. I couldn't afford even a day off. And yet, if the heart is sore, caged, walled off, or otherwise engaged, it's almost impossible to feel those inner guides. I don't really know what happened. I just kept coming to the computer. I kept talking to the characters, though I didn't really know them. I called my editor. And while she didn't make pretty - the business is tough right now - she made it clear that I have stories to tell and she's proud to be a part of them. It reminded me that I write because I am a writer. Everything else be damned.
And the words came again. Thank God.
Just keep looking on the bright side. Things have to even out eventually.
This may sound kleshay but you have to take the good with the bad. I believe it helps one learn how to deal better the next time. Sending several cyber hugs your way!
I'm sorry to hear that so many seasoned authors are facing tough times or at least times of change. I myself can't really get into the "modern" books and can only hope that there is enough support for the types of books that I like. I hope you can hang in there and fight or just fight another day if it comes to that. I really hope you don't have to.
Things are changing for me too and not really for the better.
But today I really noticed too, how the days are getting longer and that does lift my spirit. More snow is predicted overnight but it's supposed to get up to about 28F from our present 21. But then it will plunge even more until the weekend where we'll be over 35.
Hugs to everybody going through whatever tough times.
Have something percolating that makes you feel great, so that if you have another depressing business day, you can turn your full attention to that other thing and feel great anyway.
Here's my deal. Shit happens. We have two choices. We can wallow in the shit and feel like shit while it's happening. Or we can rebel and insist on feeling good anyway, shit or no shit. We can shout, "screw you, shit! You can happen all you want but I'm ignoring you and focusing on the roses over there instead."
It's like that saying, life isn't about waiting for the storms to pass. Life is learning to dance in the rain.
If you can practice it while things are good, taking the little bumps and turning your attention elsewhere, and get the hang of it, it'll be easier when the big stuff happens.
That's what I'm doing anyway, and it's working very well. I still get knocked on my ass now and then, but I bounce back FAST, like within a few hours or a day at most, and feel just as good as ever.
I don't know. It works for me.
Maggie
Maggie, you said exactly what I was thinking. I try to live the same way. There isn't much more I can add to that. :)
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