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.
