writer at play
I found a template that I like much better than my old one; hence the new look of my fledgling website. The color scheme is pretty similar to the one of the old design, but I find this look more readable. The font is a little bigger, the text area is not crowded out by the sidebar design, and (yay!) all the posts are dated. I also like the two-column right sidebar; it makes things look cleaner, more organized. All in all, a change I am pleased with… for now. The longer I work with this website, the pickier I’ll get about what design and layout features I want. Good thing I’m not paying any money for website design as yet because I’m such a novice at this!
What do you think of the template change? Yay or nay? What features do you like to see (or not like to see) on a blog or website?
I’ll continue with my musings about how my writing passion survived this past year in subsequent posts about writing prompts, one of which worked really well for me. It might take me a few days because I am trying to go into labor right now *grin*. If I succeed, I’m not going to be online for a couple days. In the meantime, feel free to have a party in the comments section.
Last post I talked about how I’ve (more or less) come to terms with the fact that there are certain phases of my life (ie: pregnancy) where I don’t have the physical, mental or emotional energy left over for writing. What few resources I have are given over to taking care of my family (I have two under four! and a husband who needs some wifely companionship every now and again) and that’s just as it should be. I have learned to shake a stick at the Specter of Writer’s Guilt that insists that a REAL writer would find the time and space and energy to write. (Of course, a REAL writer would be under contract and making money from advances and royalties, too, but we won’t go into the rest of my insecurities right now).
This time I want to talk about how I keep that writing spark, that yearning for making and telling stories, alive during my Zombie Times.
First off, lots and lots of reading. While the Year of the Zombie is a time of guilt-free not-writing, it is also a time of guilt-free READING. I read in my genre, outside my genre, and wildly outside my genre. All kinds of fiction teach me about the craft of writing. All kinds of non-fiction give me content that I can sink my teeth into: premises to follow to wild conclusions, nuances of politics and society and economics to give my worlds that extra edge of realism, character complexity. This pregnancy, my reading has ranged from fantasy (Sherwood Smith, Robin Hobb, Diana Wynne Jones) to biographies of Revolutionary heroes to books I pulled off the library shelves “just because”. And picture books. Lots and lots of picture books. (You may think that I do it just for my children, but I assure you picture books are my secret weapon in the mad scramble to get published–and wouldn’t you like to know why!).
Secondly, continuing to daydream. Sitting in the car, lying awake in bed, taking a shower–I let my mind wander freely from character to character, story idea to story idea. Stories that I would have otherwise rejected as being too bizarre, too out-of-genre, too hard for my current skills have grown and blossomed to the point where they actually have made it into my to-write queue.
Keeping in touch with the writing community. Writing is a such a solitary pursuit and, as a stay-at-home mom, I often feel so disconnected that it really helps to keep up with writing blogs and forums. Just knowing that someone out there is writing, revising, submitting, angsting, rejoicing, being published keeps that fire alive in me. (So keep blogging all you writers out there!)
Tinkering with already-written short stories. I have no brain for original work, but I can revise and edit and submit some of my shorts. I came to this strategy late–but it has gained me two acceptances and one rewrite request in the last month. Wonder why it took so long for me to get to those…
Writing exercises. More on that later, but I discovered one writing prompt that has worked really really well for me. It hasn’t led to any story ideas, but it has given me insight into the themes and metaphors that keep cropping up again and again in my work.
According to the Rabiaesan Calendar, this is the Year of the Zombie (another note: the Rabiaesan Calendar skips around a lot, but began last year in November). Strangely, I cannot write while pregnant. This is probably because all my creative brain cells migrate down to the uterus to supervise the delicate and complex task of making a baby. Here’s hoping that they will return once the baby’s here, but it’s a hit-and-miss thing. I’m still missing some from the last two pregnancies; I have the feeling they fled to Bermuda where they are reading chick-lit and sipping pina coladas on the the beach.
All this to say that writing has been on the back burner for a while. Stories are lying cocooned in my mind, gently simmering away, gestating in the quiet dark, take your pick of metaphors. And that’s okay. There is a time and a season for everything under heaven: a time for making babies, and a time for making books. I’m sure all of us writers have been blindsided by life every now and again, and you know what? It’s okay to take time off from the physical act of putting words on paper (or computer screen) to get our affairs in order, pursue other things or just plain rejuvenate and recover. It’s taken me a long time to come to this place of acceptance: Writer’s Guilt, like Mommy Guilt, is a strong negative force in my life.
How ’bout all you other writers/creative people? What saps your creative energies, and how do you deal with it?
Next time, I’ll talk about how I keep that lovin’ feelin’ for writing, even during this long dry stretch of not-writing.
I just got a “revise and resubmit” request from a magazine, a first for me. Of course, I have no brain right now (baby’s due any day now!) but revising to editorial request will be an interesting process for me. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.
I’m still trying to get the kinks out of this website before I “officially” go live, but I couldn’t resist sharing this with you. Note that yours truly is on the list of contributors. 
