Fear

Last year I said I was going to turn 2015 into a great year. And so far I have… but I have to admit, it came at the expense of my writing.

No… that’s not right, because I have been writing. I’ve been neglecting my marketing and the ‘getting my writing published’.

This game is a constant struggle to get noticed. At least that’s been my experience, I’m sure there are writers out there with a different story, but this is mine.

So why has this year been great? Because I’m doing fun things with my life. The last two years have been a disaster. I was trying to get healthy again, and everything in my life felt like a struggle. I decided to take back control. At first it blew up in my face, and I was at a very low point at the beginning of 2015. I struggled to find my creativity after that, and most of the stuff I’ve written this year, ended up in my ‘discarded’ folder.

I think I’ve finally found the balance in my life between work and everything else. I started living in the ‘here and now’ again. Aside from making time for my daughter, I really did little else than work the last two years. I made long days and was pretty much a recluse.

Right now I have a social life, I have hobbies and I still manage to write between 2000-6000 words a day (but only on week days)

It feels good, I feel happier and I don’t set myself up for disappointment as much as I did… but… and there is a big but (not to be confused with big butt)… I’m disappearing into the unknown. Where I used to have at least one interview per month, I haven’t done an interview in ages. People still know me on facebook as Chanti or Noodles, but I think sometimes they forget I’m a writer too. Plus… I haven’t published anything new, so those who do know me, and like my work, don’t have anything new to read. This puts quite a lot of pressure on me, because I want to be professional. The sad thing is… I have something that’s pretty much finished. It would need another good professional edit, but it’s 80% of the way there (It already had one edit). The problem is… I don’t know what to do with it.

No, that’s a lie… I do know what to do with it. I need to keep sending it to agents. That part scares me, and I keep putting it off. Just as I’m putting off getting Wrath (the second story in Even Hell Has Standards) edited. It’s stupid fear. I need to get over that.

Part of me is terrified about finishing the first book in the Celestials series, because then I need to find it a home. It’s not horror, and I’m totally out of my element in the ‘not horror’ community. I don’t know any other publishers, etc. I need to start investing time and energy in this, but I just don’t know where to start. Once I get going, it should be okay. Part of me just wishes this was easier and more clear cut. Part of me wishes I could just be satisfied with writing only horror. That’s familiar territory. It’s not easy being a slipstream author, or being a genre floozy. I know it’s within my control to change it, but I also know I’d be really unhappy if I couldn’t just tell the stories I really wanted to tell.

So for now I’ll just keep pondering. And maybe even avoid fixing this problem until I feel a bit more confident. Who knows what will come up in the mean time?

I have some ideas of what I want to do. One of them is to start my own video series. I haven’t worked out the specifics yet, but it will be a nice little thing to do next to my writing that I would just have a lot of fun with. I don’t expect much of it other than I’ll enjoy creating the videos.

I’m hoping that my productivity will pick up towards the end of the year, and that I’ll overcome my own fear. I do miss the excitement of having a new book out. Readers, book parties, etc… I love it!