IWSG - Highs & Lows

 It’s the first Wednesday of the month and time for the Insecure Writers Support Group. The purpose is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! A big THANKS to Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh for starting this group and keeping it going. And thanks to this month's awesome hosts Laura at My Baffling Brain, mark Koopmans, Shah Wharton, and Sheena-Kay Graham.

Also, this is the 3rd Anniversary of this group. I haven’t been a member that long, but I can’t give enough praise for the wonderful members of this supportive group. Thanks, guys!

The past two months have been filled with highs and lows. Apologies for my absence last month. Our regularly scheduled program was smack dab in the middle of the high—my son’s wedding. Since the event (and surrounding ones) took place here and the bride and groom live in Arizona, our house became Event Central. We even had house guests for a week. Suffice it to say, the end of July/beginning of August was crazy. A good kind of crazy. The high point, of course, was watching two people who are madly in love pledge their lives to each other.

In the midst of all that crazy, it was impossible to concentrate on anything else—like writing. After everything returned to normal (sort of), I was too tired to write. Then the I SUCK Fairy arrived and took up residence. Now she’s been here before, but I didn’t know her name until I read about her at the Spacefreighters Lounge’s 5th Annual Burning of Bad Juju.

So why did she come in the midst of such joy? I let her in after receiving the edits for my PI mystery. Obviously, those edits were totally unexpected. (BTW, I don’t do criticism well. After twenty years in the business, you’d think I would’ve developed a thicker psyche.) Consequently, I did my usual. First, I played Scarlett O’Hara and told myself I’d think about it tomorrow (or after the wedding). Then I played the ostrich. When I wanted to get back to writing, I went to two other WIPs instead. Guess what? That darn fairy had taken over them, too. Nothing I wrote (what little I did write) was any good. The delete key got a lot of use. Even if I couldn’t work on my WIPs, I had obligations. I wrote blogs for Paranormal Romantics and The Roses of Prose. I hosted visitors to my blog. I read. I watched a lot of TV, especially movies. (If you want to read more about this, scroll down for this past Monday Morning’s Moaning.)

Then yesterday, first day of school here in Michigan, I opened one of my WIPs and started writing again. Maybe there is something to burning the bad stuff in your writing life—even if figuratively. I kicked that I SUCK Fairy’s butt and wrote pages and pages on my Outer Rim story. Yay!

Now I have to figure out how to kick her out of the PI mystery. If you see large flames near Lake Michigan, don’t worry. It’s me burning the I SUCK Fairy in effigy.

Click here to find others on the Insecure Writers Support Group Blog Hop. Or go to IWSG on Facebook to see who’s blogging today.