Between

I completed a massive rewrite the other day and sent it out.  When I say massive, I mean big, a whole novel.  There’s a lot riding on this and I find myself fidgety and on edge in a way I haven’t experienced in a long time.  It was an older book, one I thought (mistakenly, as it turned out) was done, complete, just fine.  What I found was proof that I need a good editor.

But the work is done and it’s out the door and all I can do now is wait for the yea or the nay.  Not sure what I’ll do if the answer is…

Everytime I get to the end of a major project, I find myself at sixes and sevens, loose ends need chasing down, and I don’t quite know what to do with myself.  Formerly, some of this time and excess energy was spent by going to a job.  That’s not an option now.  I used to go through a frenzy of cleaning house as well and I will likely do some of that today.  But later.  This morning, after breakfast, I opened Photoshop and noodled with a few images.  Having multiple creative streams is a good thing when you’re in a situation like this.  The above image is one result and I’ve decided to sandwich this post between two pictures.

Not to be melodramatic, but in some ways I’m facing a turning point.  I have to do Something.  Almost 30 years ago I set my goal to become a published writer.  Much to my amazement, I succeeded, but the effort birthed the desire to do this as my main work, which means I have to keep publishing.  Whether we like it or not, we need money to live, otherwise I could quite contentedly (I think, I tell myself) write for my own pleasure and use this medium or others to put the work out and not worry about income streams.  But it’s not just the income and anyone who writes for a living knows very well that this is true.  After a five year spurt of publishing intensity, things have ground to a virtual halt.  There are a number of reasons for this, some of them entirely my fault.  But I have to turn it around and soon or walk away.

I’m not at all sure I can and remain whole.

Of course I have this older art, photography.  I can, with some difficulty, get a freelance business up and running.  There’s music, too, although I am years from the kind of proficiency that would adequately supplement my income.  Tomorrow I’ll be playing guitar at the anniversary party of the business of a friend.  An hour or so of my ideosyncratic “stylings” as a favor.  For fun.

These spans of dry time between projects require distraction lest I tumble into a tangle of self-pity and despair.  It never lasts, I’m not so stoically romantic that I can sustain the dark time of the soul connected to artists denied their opportunity.  For better or worse, I seek happiness and am constitutionally incapable of living long in depression.  If not today, then by Monday I’ll be at work on something new or a new twist on something old and I’ll be trying again.

And for the time being I feel like the rewrite just finished is pretty good.  I have confidence in it.  I will let you all know if the news is…

Well, whatever it is.

Have a good weekend.