Lack of focus: I keep thinking of the Rolling Stones song "Shattered," but with the word "Scattered" instead. Describing myself. Scattered, scattered...shadoobie. I feel soooo scattered lately and am having trouble focusing on one writing project. I have bits and pieces of many, many projects floating around in my head, yet haven't sat down lately to work on any of them. (Being sick on & off for a month hasn't helped.) My goal for the rest of the month is to get some contest entries prepared and sent in, but haven't even managed to concentrate on that. (Completely unrelated, but in a similar fashion, I always found myself thinking of the Cure song "Fascination Street" while filling out "pagination sheets" in my tech writing job--note the rhyme. I could no more stop that song from getting into my head than I could stop from yawning when someone mentions it. How about you...are you yawning now?)
I've had so much distress floating around my head this week that I thought about writing a list called 50 Reasons to Give Up on Writing. Over the weekend, I've probably had close to that many different thoughts, some related to the market or writing in general (most recently, reading bad reviews that led me to believe my own would be worse), and some related to me and my quirks, leading me to think, "In that case, I might as well just give up." But then, I can't really give up because I have a few insistent reasons to go on--namely: Lydia, Lainie, Dan, Whitney, Miranda, and friends--characters whose stories I feel compelled to tell, even if no one else cares to hear them. Sounds silly but it's true. I will be really unhappy with myself if I never get all these stories out of my head and onto paper. I have to think they're in my head for a reason!
Today I read a midgrade novel called While You Were Out by J. Irvin Kuns. I hadn't heard of it before; it just caught my eye in the library. I thought it was pretty good. Though I really need to be reading picture books in preparation for the picture book workshop I'm going to in 2 weeks!
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