I decided to take a nice sabbatical this week. Okay, I was
forced to take a nice sabbatical this week. Due to some problems with the internet provider, I was without all external resources. No internet, no email. But it was good for me. It made me sit down and brainstorm the future of Woodsocket '79—what I want its primary theme to be, how I want it laid out, the overall tone. Before I was just writing stories about people in the town, which is good because each story has its own life and each needed that sort of devoted isolation, but there also needed to be a thread to hold everything together, and I found that. I knew it all along, but was too scared to sit down and devote myself, because what if what I came up with was crap? I'm always so afraid of that. Sometimes I'll have a story in my head for months before getting the nerve to write it. Almost always things are fine and the story just flows. I'm always so surprised that things work out the way they do!
My next worry is that, after all this work, the book will die a slow and lonely death. I hear story collections are a hard sell. Time will tell.
It sure is nice to have internet again, but I'm happy for the time to think. It was good. I just hope I didn't miss any important emails : (
Here's to a Happy Saturday for all of you!
Amy I really missed you this week. Isn't it a pain when broadband decides it doesn't want to work any more! Glad it's fixed! But it is good to have space to sort other things out in your life as well. And there's always those 'What ifs!!' lurking in the background to shake your confidence! The stories you've put up on your blog about times in your childhood are really good so 'Woodsocket '79 will all come together in it's own good time - no worries about that! x
ReplyDeleteThanks Molly : ) I'm starting to learn that comparison is my enemy. Sometimes I research other writers in the same genre and become down after reading their tight, beautiful prose or lovely, winding, descriptions. I shouldn't do that. No matter what, I can only write what I have the ability to write, and then when it's done the only thing to do is hope for the best.
ReplyDeleteBreaks can be very useful. I took such a long one over the holidays and then for my mom's funeral, then finishing my novel. Now I'm just frantically blogging like a maniac wanting to visit all my friends and say *hi! I missed you*
ReplyDeleteWe missed you! Hope things go well with the new manuscript.
ReplyDeleteDon't Emails just stack-up? I don't think you would have missed any.
ReplyDeleteThe whole point about machines is that you press a button, and they do whatever they're supposed to do. When that fails I can feel my life slowly draining away. Only by mending 'said machine' with a very heavy hammer will I return to normality. Thank goodness Lady M keeps my hammer locked well away.
Welcome back, Amy.
Cro, have you ever watched that youtube video where a guy gets really mad at his computer and just beats the holy crud out of it? I think we've all been there!
ReplyDeleteI wish I could just blame the computer, but my problem was more a matter of finances. It was better to give up the internet for a week then agree to the exorbitant prices AT&T (AS&S as I like to call them now) were throwing out. I thought I could go to the library and check email on yahoo like every other human, but no, AT&T blocked that. So all emails that happened this week are gone forever.
Anyway, glad to be back : ) Hope things are well!!