Day-to-Day Depression

I love the way people assume that when I’m not writing, I’m doing editing or promoting or some other author-centred bit of business. They’d probably have a lot less respect for me if they knew how much time I devote to Candy Crush.

After all, writing is a Serious Business, and if one isn’t Dedicated to Working Hard, then one isn’t a Real Writer at all, and just a Waste of More Important Writers’ Time. While that last sentence is bursting at the seams with bullshit, I’ve met many an author/editor (or person who thinks they are an author or editor) who holds that opinion. What I take away from that is that my writing ‘street cred’ isn’t as high as it should be.

I suffer from a combination of depression, anxiety, and general laziness, and I’m never sure which one has the most influence. I know what Serious Writers would say, and I’m unable to prove them wrong. If it was just laziness, however, I could get over it and get on with things.

A typical day in the life of Tim happens something like this – get up, feed the cats, go to work, come home, Candy Crush and bed. Somewhere in there, I write. Most of my best writing comes during the half-hour before work, which these days is a temp job that barely pays almost what I need to survive. During the work day, I’ll look forward to all the writing-related stuff I can get to when I’m home. When I get home, however, my energy and motivation are gone.

Well, I must get so much done during those long employment gaps between temp jobs, right? If only. I’ll get up, feed the cats, go back to bed, sleep in, get up again for food, feed the cats again, think about doing something useful with my time, take a nap, try and get myself out of the condo to do some writing, come back, do something about supper, Candy Crush, bed. It takes an herculean amount of will to get me onto my computer to do some actual work. Or, you know, look for a job.

I don’t like talking about this side of me, because what are people likely to say? If I want things to get better, I should do something about it! Stop the pity party and pull myself up by my bootstraps, because success won’t just happen. Stop feeling sorry for myself, and using my mental health as an excuse not to succeed. If I point out they wouldn’t say the same thing to someone living with cancer, I’ll get: “Are you really comparing your mental health to cancer?”

Yeah, I do use my mood disorder as an excuse. Doesn’t mean it isn’t there. I don’t know where my depression ends and my laziness begins, so when I’m accused of not putting the effort in my critics are never entirely wrong. Trouble is, getting on with things is extremely hard, and getting harder every day.

I could have had Apoca-Lynn out months ago. Same for Closets. I could be having great success with my other projects, if I could only get to them. I want to get my work back out there, into the hands of agents and publishers. I want to have a solid marketing campaign on several social media platforms. All I can manage, though, is what I’m currently doing.

Sometimes, I beat the laziness. I send out some resumes, I fix a problem in a manuscript, I do something that matters. It’s never enough. Not if I want to succeed as an author.

I do what I can. And feel badly about what I don’t. I’m sick, and I am lazy. But I wasn’t always this lazy.

The world doesn’t care about mental illness, only about results. You won’t succeed at writing by playing Candy Crush, Tim! Stop making excuses and work! What do you think you are, a cancer patient?

My Revision Needs Revising

I'm really struggling to get on with editing and revising my work. I have four manuscripts on my hard drive, waiting for me to rewrite them from a cruddy first draft into a reasonable second, and then a ready-to-show-people third. I want to get on with it, I really do, but at times it can seem so very daunting.

My depression plays a part, of course. All tasks seem impossibly hard when I'm down, revisions included. I can't even crack my laptop open during those times, so editing is out of the question.

When I'm feeling better, though, it just seems like exactly what it is: a lot of work waiting to get done. That bothers me more than it used to. It would seem like I've got the deck stacked against me, or rather like I've stacked the deck against myself.

Having said that, I have managed to revise the first 100 pages of a project called Kids Who Know. Longtime readers of this blog will remember me describing this novel as the best book I'll ever write. I feel very strongly about this story (obviously), but perhaps I shouldn't have hyped it up so much in my mind. That's a lot to live up to. Will I ever produce a draft of this book that will meet such a lofty goal?

If I don't try, however, I'll never advance any further with my writing career. I've got one very important thing on my side - I want to succeed as a writer. Therefore, I must persevere. Bit by bit, I will.

The Cupid War - First Love!

I am tremendously grateful to my editors at Flux for helping me make my books the best they could be. A perfect example of their help came during the revisions of The Cupid War, when they suggested I flesh out the details regarding the first couple Fallon had created. Originally, I had simply mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 9 that Fallon had successfully brought two people together. Flux thought I could do better, and I did; I came up with the idea that Fallon had united two writer/performers at a spoken word event. Thanks to those extra details, I not only had a stronger scene in the novel, I also had the seeds for a short story!

The Cupid War: Fallon's First Couple is an even-more-fleshed-out version of that scene. It features both Fallon and his mentor Caleb, and includes a certain naughty song that I wrote during my own spoken word days. I plan to release this story here, on this blog, in just under a month's time. If you liked The Cupid War, don't miss this sequel... no, it's not a sequel. Or a prequel. It's more of an... inthemiddleofquel. You'll see what I mean when you read the story. And you can do so on November 1st.

Mark your calendars, cancel your appointments and practice your call-in-sick voices! You won't be sorry.

Don't forget to check out this blog's other short story, Walk of Evil. And please post some comments - I love feedback!

Killing Characters and Fixing Mistakes

I just killed off a minor character. Then I brought him back. One of my main characters stabbed him. And then he didn't. It occurred to me that the stabbing was a possibility, so I gave it a go for a couple of sentences. It was sudden and completely unexpected, but it wasn't quite right. That, and I didn't really know what to do with it. So I took it out. I turned back time. You can do that, when you're an author. Sometimes, though, it takes a lot more than a couple of sentences for me to realize I've gone the wrong way. Once, I had to excise an entire chapter to fix a mistake. More recently, I had to chop about five chapters from a novel. And, both Evil and Epoch required a three-chapter rewrite near their ends to correct some serious gaffes (that my editors caught, not me). Mistakes happen. Even in writing! Even when you're still in the super-creative, make-it-all-up part of the process. Realizing you've made one is actually a sign that you're doing something right; you know your characters and story well enough to detect when something's wrong. It's a gut thing, for the most part. Trust your gut. Try things out. One way might look right; go for the one that feels right. The one that feels like it's part of the story. That minor character of mine gets to live. It wasn't his time to go. Not yet. I killed off a major character instead. I'm a whole chapter past that point now, and still going. It works. The story is happy. So am I.

New Vid & Amazon Page

I have a couple of new things to report! First, I have made another book-describing video, this one about Evil. You can see that vid by clicking here.

I now have an Amazon page! Click right here to have a look.

I've nearly finished another chapter of my latest comic fantasy. That one has been going well, with lots of ideas flowing. I've also finally started revising Kids Who Know. KWK is a story I'm really excited about, but I've felt too intimidated to edit it for the longest time. I've revised 100 pages so far, and it is going well.

Yay!