When Life Gets Tough...

...get to writing! Or keep on writing. Either way, this is what I'm determined to do. I missed my deadline to have the book finished by August, so now my goal is to finish before the end of September. I really don't need this book interfering with my ability to write during Nanowrimo, and I'm certain that it will, if I know that it's sitting nearby, aaaalmost finished, but not quite.

Mostly, the reason I missed my own deadline was due to a lot of craziness and stress in my life. Perhaps it's understandable if one knows my circumstances, but to me it isn't. Instead of writing through the pain and emotions, I stopped writing, which only magnifies everything and makes it worse.

I also haven't heard back about my short story that I submitted, even though it's been over the 6-8 week span the publication estimates for a response. I've determined that if I don't hear from them by the end of this week (week 10), then I will write a prompt letter.

August was my month of bad, horrible luck. Each week got progressively worse than the one before, culminating in finding out that my father has an incurable brain tumor, and leaving me ultimately unemployed again (knowing that it is a temporary position does not help in the slightest when one is laid off). I am hopeful that September will be my month of good luck--or at least be my bend in the road toward one that is.

I'm not yet optimistic about life again, but I'm going to write toward it.

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Slow-Going...

I feel like I'm plodding along so slowly in my writing that slugs are passing me, slathering me in their slime as they speed away. Hm. Actually, that's probably the most creative sentence I've written in about a week, right there.

I haven't been doing a lot of fresh writing lately. If I do, it's only bits and pieces. Nothing significant. I'm still working on my new short story. I didn't get it done for that deadline, but I figured I wouldn't, all things considered. There's just too much going on in my life right now. I'm trying so hard to get the apartment set up for the baby, but I can't do it all myself and my husband is almost never able to help me. He's always working overtime so we can pay bills and buy groceries, and I barely see him anymore. The little time he is home, we're both sleeping for most of it. So I'm doing most of the housework and preparations myself, but at this point in the pregnancy, there's a lot I just can't do, and it seems he never has time to help me. So nothing gets done that needs to get done, usually. It's frustrating.

On top of all that, I'm not sleeping well anymore. I find I can only sleep for about 2-5 hours anymore, before I wake up and can't get back to sleep for several hours. So the upshot of all that is that I can't even get a lot of housework or preparations for the baby done myself because I'm so tired and I have no help. And trying to write when I'm tired is just about impossible.

Probably the most I've been able to accomplish in relation to writing the last few days is to read some of a book I have on how to write magazine articles, produced by Writer's Digest.

And did I mention we're in financial and other stress again? We're always tight on money as it is, but Tuesday a really bad snowstorm hit our area, and we got dumped on big time. You could hardly see anything while driving, so we ended up canceling our appointment to interview a pediatrician that morning and went home. I tried really hard to convince my husband to stay home and not go in because of the weather, but I couldn't...and not too long after he left, he got in a car accident due to the snowy, icy roads. So, unfortunately (long story short), he didn't get in to work that day. He was okay, but the other lady in the accident was complaining about neck and back pain even though she seemed to be moving and walking around just fine, so my husband is worried she's going to take us to court and sue. And we can't afford to go to court and hire a lawyer, much less be sued. It would put us in debt that we'd never be able to get out of, probably, since we're barely making it right now as it is, and since we're already a little in debt right now anyway. How are we supposed to support ourselves, much less our baby that's almost HERE, for crying out loud, if we have to go to court and get sued? We're barely squeezing by as it is.

Those are the major things going on right now. There are a million other smaller things going on, too. Our family just can't seem to get a break. I'm trying hard not to get depressed or dwell on things and worry--or let my husband do it, either--but it's hard not to. And needless to say, it's hard to do a lot of writing with all of this happening around me and being on my mind. Still, I'm trying. Probably not as hard as I should be, but I just can't seem to get a decent night's sleep to be able to have enough energy to get anything done. I find myself falling asleep for unintended naps when I sit to rest, and waking up hours later. It's frustrating.

Well, at least tonight I read two and half chapters in that book on magazine writing. So I got something accomplished, right? That's more than I've managed in a few days, writing-wise...

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Struggling Against Writer's Depression

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.

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Does It Ever Stop?

To answer the question in the title...No, I don't think that it ever does.

I only managed a little bit of writing today. Started a new poem, which petered out when I couldn't find a rhyme for a word I really want to use because the imagery is very pretty. Typed up an old piece of my writing so I have a copy I can change and edit, instead of marking up the only hardcopy original that I seem to have. That's about it. Didn't get anything else done. Wasted day, in a lot of ways. I tried to do some writing, and I was well on the way, but basically I got some bad news when my husband came home from work, and I can't get past it enough right now to write. I'm too worried and depressed.

Basically, despite the fact that the company said they were going to hire him on permanently this week, they called him into their office today and told him that his handle time needs to go down, and they're giving him a probationary period to work on this and fix it.

I'm worried he's going to lose his job, the only source of income we have. And there's little enough of that as it is. And it's not like I'm going to get a job, being pregnant and about to have a baby. If he loses this job and we're out of income again, I don't know what we'll do. We're struggling to pay bills as it is.

Why can't anything ever go right for us?

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