Sheila Rambles

The words are still coming with some reluctance but the books stacked on my table are looking like a reward instead of a duty, so I think I'll roll things in that direction.

One of the disadvantages of going at the slow crawl I'm going now is that I wind up losing track of things that happened only a couple of pages ago. For example, I did a quick reread of the scene I'm working on and realized oh, wait, they're still naked, aren't they? Hell of a thing to forget. My brain is still in ravenous devouring mode, so I checked some books out of the library to feed it with--a book about alchemy and a couple of volumes of the collected works of Carl Jung. Yes, really.

I'm not sure if this is true for other people, but I find that my brain tends to go in a kind of cycle between craving input and spewing forth output. On the "Input" part of the cycle, I plow my way through books, go out exploring new places and spend perhaps a little too much time on the Internet. I am ravenous for new sensations and new experiences. On the "Output" part of the cycle, I fill pages upon pages, scribble my attempts at artwork and find myself overflowing with ideas, though I may also want to retreat to more stable routines instead of taking in anything else. The problem with the "Input" cycle is that the words don't come easily, even if I need to produce them. (But I can catch up on my reading like crazy, let me tell ya.) Every indication is that I'm currently in an "Input" cycle. Instead of beating myself up for it, I figure I'll just stuff myself until I'm satiated and see if that helps any.

Still chiseling it out, it seems, but part of the issue is that my time and energies are being taken up with other matters, so what little bits I get in are better than rationalizing that I'll get back to writing when these things blow over. I stopped at the question "Are you all right?" so it should be easy enough to pick up when I return to it.

. . . when a mere forty-three words feels like a victory. Today, apparently, is one of them.

Two submissions, two rejections. Yes, I know, it's what's supposed to happen. Labor Day weekend was spent at Dragon*Con, where I was able to talk with all kinds of smart people and get different kinds of writerly advice from various writerly types. I also had a few people ask to read the novel, so I'll be gathering email addresses and sending out PDFs to them soon. I'm also 21,000 words into another book and STUCK AS HELL on it. I think I need to grab a looseleaf notebook and do some free writing to get through the logjam. Thanks to a link on the Absolute Write forums, I came across Query Shark , which has been enormously helpful for giving me ideas on how to tighten and refine my query letter. It does help to learn from other people's mistakes. I've just put my own query on the block and we'll see if I get a response on it, but I'm not going to let that be an excuse to keep me from sending the thing out anyway. I've fallen for that trap before...