Ecce Signum

Yeah, the above photo sums up my state of mind for the past month.

Not long after posting the April IWSG response, the burnout came crashing down and my mental capacity was reduced to little more than spasmodically responding to immediate stimuli. Fortunately, in my day job I am a programmer. Programming, when you boil it down to the essentials, is really about creating specific responses to specific stimuli. We call it “input”, but why split hairs?

Therefore my entire creative output for National Poetry Month came to maybe five poems, out of which at most one shows any promise. But I did become even more sleep deprived, which is a victory of sorts.

The May 2023 Insecure Writer’s Support Group question is: When you are working on a story, what inspires you?

This is a surprisingly difficult question to answer, as inspiration could change from story to story, or even from scene to scene within a story. So it might be more useful for me to answer that at a deeper level – what inspires me to be creative? And I think the answer to that is, the drive to create something which is ideally beautiful, hopefully internally consistent, and which effectively communicates the original multidimensional idea behind the story.

As I move well into middle age, and look back over the scores of stories and hundreds of poems in my portfolio, I think everything I have written is a facet of the same stone, and I am polishing that facet and presenting it to my readers and saying “Do you see?” And whether the answer is “yes” or “no,” I use that response as inspiration to hone my craft and try to communicate that idea through another facet, be it a novel, a short story, a poem, fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, a game, or a scribbled note in the margins of an old Dungeons and Dragons character sheet.

At the beginning each of my creative works is inspired by asking “what if?”

As I near the end of the process, the inspiration may mutate into desperation because I just want to be able to write THE END without, you know, skipping to THE END.

As a final note, I want to thank the IWSG community for accepting me into their ranks. I have been participating for just over two years, and writing these posts, and reading the other answers to the monthly questions, help keep me focused and, frankly, inspired.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.

Oh, what a month was March. The hours seemed to fly by, but the days dragged. The weather is much improved, though the warmest day of the year so far was back in February.

I have a new project at work which, while not demanding any more time than any other project, is taking vastly more mental energy than I am used to, so writing over the past month has been sparse.

April is National Poetry Month! As with the past several Aprils, I attempt to write a poem a day for the month, while primarily reading poetry, just to keep my head in that space. So far I have written four poems, which brings my total for the year to, uh, four.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group question for April 2023 is:

Do you remember writing your first book? What were your thoughts about a career path on writing? Where are you now and how is it working out for you? If you’re at the start of the journey, what are your goals?

I have written six books over the past decade, thanks to NaNoWriMo. Of those six, two (one literary fiction, one magic realism/weird fiction) are completed first drafts. The rest are in various stages of “in progress” or “abandoned.”

It goes without saying, therefore, that I have not yet published any books of my own writing.

I have never expected to make a career out of writing books, or indeed any other kind of writing. The few pieces I have had published (short stories, poems) were not published at paying markets. This is fine. I used to run a small publisher, and I know how these things go.

But I suppose a “career” is not necessarily the same thing as whatever we do for our main, or even secondary (tertiary, etc.) source of income. This eases the pressure on writing by loosening time constraints and making those self-imposed deadlines more like guidelines. This works both for and against us, as I am sure all of you have discovered at one time or another.

As for writing goals, it is difficult right now to make long-term writing plans. I have a great many stories and poems bouncing around in my head, but finding the quiet time to put those words to paper is not as easy as it was five years ago. I am a little older every year, and when given the option between half an hour of writing and half an hour of sleep, sleep will win every time.

Then again, April is finally here and today the outside temperature is expected to be above 70°. That would make today the warmest day of the year so far. I don’t know about you-all but warmer weather just makes everything easier.

Even writing.

The Insecure Writer’s Support Group
is a community dedicated to encouraging
and supporting insecure writers
in all phases of their careers.