Struggling Against Writer's Depression
>> Tuesday, February 26, 2008
So I've been bad, very bad. I hadn't written anything in about a week, until just yesterday. Of course, I'm busy with household chores and trying to get ready for the baby, but that was only a small part of the overall picture of why I wasn't writing. The main reason I wasn't writing is depression, of a sort.
I got seven rejections last Monday. And those rejections came at a really bad time, since I was already down and depressed that morning from the lack of having a job and being stuck at home all day, doing chores and feeling like I'm not doing anything worthwhile or getting anywhere with my work situation or writing. I couldn't bear to sit down and write after all of that, so I focused on other stuff that day, and eventually the day turned into a week. I kind of felt like "Well, what's the point in writing? I keep getting rejections. See, it really isn't going anywhere, and those rejections just proved it."
But then I finally woke up and realized that if I'm not writing anything, then I really won't ever get published. So, I sat down and wrote about three hundred and some words on the book I began for NaNoWriMo last November. It wasn't a lot, but it was something.
Today I wrote about 631 words on that weird short story idea I got from my husband's friend. I don't know if I can finish it by the deadline (I checked today, and the deadline is March 1st! That should teach me to waste time not writing!), but if I don't, I'll probably just submit the short story to other places and see what happens. I feel more confident in my story writing ability anyway, and much more comfortable with that kind of writing. So maybe I'll take a short break from poetry for a bit. Stories are more my speed, anyway--even short stories, apparently. Though I may not be great at coming up with workable ideas for short stories, I'm still more at ease writing those, at the moment, than poetry. It's still too soon, the wounds of so many rejections all at once still too raw, to go back to poetry right now.