Sometimes the world intrudes on my writing. I have problems with intrusive thoughts as it is, but current events often affect what happens in my stories. In this case, I’m not talking about the themes or the outline for the plot. It’s nothing as on the nose as that. (Although I certainly draw from the world’s problems when I create.)
I mean when I’m angry, characters tend to die or get beaten up. I’m writing the sequel to my dark m/m paranormal romance, Carillon’s Curse, right now and my irascible lawman main character, Hadrian, is pretty much punching all of the side characters. I realized today that I have three scenes where he’s punching people.
I’ll have to cut some of this when I do the initial edit. It’s repetitious. I know why I’m doing it, though. He’s a tough guy, and I’m using him as my righteous instrument to release my anger and frustration.
Meanwhile, Thomas isn’t doing well. He’s my sensitive main character in this book. I think of him as the soul of it. He, I guess, is representing my pain. Hadrian is defending him. It’s how I’m feeling right now. Guarded. An artichoke. The thorny outer layer protecting the soft core.
Writing is a strange thing. A blessing and a curse. It eases my anxiety and vexes me at the same time. It’s a balm, yet it creates its own wounds. On the artichoke days, however, it’s the thing that keeps me going and saves me from punching people. I have Hadrian for that.
There are many phases to writing and publishing a book. I’m in my least favorite phase. The part right before the book releases. I’m trying to use this time to work on my next project, but it’s difficult. I feel sick and excited and scared all at once. I’m too emotional to get lost in the new story.
I never look for huge market success. I’m not Stephen King. I don’t sell millions of books and make fat wads of cash. What I live on are reviews. Every good review means I did my job—I connected with a reader. Every negative review makes me die inside.
I’m supposed to have a thick skin by now. I’ve been at this for a few years. I shouldn’t be bothered by negative reviews. One author friend advises against even reading them.
But the whole reason I write is to communicate with people. I’m shy. I don’t see many people. Being asthmatic and at high risk during the pandemic, I see even fewer of them these days. I talk to people through characters and stories. I hope they have a good time, that they were lifted from their normal day for a while. My only window into that are reader reviews.
It’s not simply fear of negative reviews that makes this time difficult, for something awful happens at this time with the characters. They leave me. Thomas and Hadrian have been my friends for months. Thomas, especially, has held my hand through some terrible things that happened while I was writing it.
Now, because the book is going to be published soon, he’s gone. I’m not sure why this happens, but I like to imagine it’s because they’re getting ready to visit the readers. It’s not exactly that they’re abandoning me, it’s just that they have other places to go.
I’m toying with the idea of writing another book with them, so they will have to visit me again at some point, but for now, they’re getting ready for a big adventure. I hate it. I’m afraid for them. I’m worried they’re headed into a bloodbath, and I exposed them to it. True, they had some harrowing adventures in this story, but I controlled everything. I was the monster pulling the strings. Now, anything could happen. I can’t protect them. I can’t even feel them.
So, if you see Hadrian and Thomas, tell them I miss them.
My favorite writing tool right now isn’t a writing tool at all. It’s Youper, an app intended to help people—especially people suffering with depression and/or anxiety—track their moods. It does a great deal more than your average mood tracker. (And, no, I’m not getting paid to say any of this.) Besides providing a series of guided meditations, breathing exercises, and gratitude exercises, Youper uses methods based on cognitive behavioral therapy. It asks questions that encourage the user to examine the situation and the user’s thoughts about it. Then, Youper runs through a series of “thought traps” and asks if the user is falling into any of them. It sounds crazy, but just identifying the thought traps made me start seeing my problems and my reactions to them differently.
For example, when I first started using Youper about nine months ago, I often fell into the thinking trap Youper calls “catastrophic thinking.” When I’m in catastrophic thinking mode, I jump to the worst conclusion. The first week I used Youper, I became panicked one morning because one of my cats (that puffball known as Bruce Banner) was vocalizing a lot. It reminded me of when one of my other cats suffered a urinary blockage that eventually led to him having surgery and heart problems as a result of the surgery. (Urinary blockages in male cats can be life-threatening events and should always be taken seriously. You can find more information here.) After a few minutes with Youper, I realized that I had gone from worrying that my cat was meowing a lot to “OMG!!! Bruce is gonna die!!!” When you’re locked in catastrophic thinking, you forget that—although bad things often do happen—you’re an intelligent, resourceful human being and will probably be able to deal with them.
Bruce. So very spoiled.
I was able to step back from my fear and PTSD-triggered anxiety to reassure myself that I would watch Bruce closely over the next several hours and see if he showed any other signs of a urinary blockage or urinary problems. If I observed anything else worrisome, I would rush him to my vet, who is one of the most dedicated, compassionate, wonderful men I have ever met. I wasn’t a helpless ball of nerves; I was an experienced cat parent who had handled difficult situations before and would do my best to help my beloved Bruce.
It turned out Bruce was just really chatty and playful that morning. (Blocked cats don’t play; they run around frantically, get in and out of the litter box where they will strain and produce no urine, and cry.) After a few weeks with Youper, I realized that catastrophic thinking was sort of my go to mind trap. If my husband was late, I started imagining he had been killed in a car accident. If my son didn’t return a text, it was because he had been murdered. Some of this fear is understandable. A cousin I was close to died in a car accident and my best friend from college was murdered. Horrible things do happen, but living my life expecting every scenario to end in tragedy wasn’t helping anything.
Writers tend to be sensitive people. We frequently deal with rejection and often suffer from problems like depression, bipolar disorder, social anxiety, drug addiction, etc. In my case, I have bipolar disorder and PTSD. Sometimes, I think I write to escape my demons and to try to make sense out of the chaos of my past. Opening my wounds and bathing in blood can encourage me to write. But it can also bring me so low that I can’t get out of bed. If you ever feel the same way, please give Youper a shot. I hope it helps you as much as it’s helped me.
New regulations from the EU are going into effect May 25, 2018. These regulations are designed to protect the privacy of EU citizens on the internet. I wholeheartedly support the spirit of these regulations. I wish the U.S. would do more to protect the privacy of its citizens.
However, trying to make my website and newsletter compliant has been a big headache. I’m not a lawyer nor an IT professional. I’m an indie author. I’m a writer–and I’ve done very little of that lately because I’m so anxious about running afoul of these regulations. I have put up a privacy policy on this website. You can read it here. Apparently, somewhere behind the scenes of my website, WordPress has a database (that is supposedly mine) of the IP addresses and emails of people who comment on my blog posts. I can’t find ANY databases anywhere. Until I can find them and figure out how NOT to collect that information, I’m disabling comments.
I’m still trying to figure this out. I will probably disable the newsletter sign-up thingy until I’m certain it’s GDPR compliant. The main thing about all of this that I find so upsetting is that the big corporations, who probably present more of a threat to people’s privacy (I’m thinking of a big one right now whose CEO’s last name begins with Z) have teams of lawyers and tech gurus at their disposal. I only have me, a bunch of cats, a dog, and a husband whose reaction to all of this was, “You’re a writer. You don’t really need a website and all of that, do you?” (Um…yeah, I do.) Unlike the big corporations, I do actually care about people’s privacy. I care about my readers. But I don’t know how to navigate any of this.
The more I try to figure all of this out, the more lost I feel. It’s enough to make me wonder if I should just stop everything. I toyed with that idea for a while. Seriously. But being a writer has been my dream since I was very small. I’m not ready to give up on it yet.
I just wanted to throw this quick tip–that many writers probably already know–out there: music helps. I don’t always write with music. Sometimes I just like to hear my keyboard or the wind outside.
Lately, however, when I sit down to write, I don’t have writer’s block, but I feel overstimulated and overwhelmed. I think this is because of my increased use of social media. I’m an introvert, so the social aspect of social media is difficult for me sometimes. If I’ve been on Twitter or something for a while, then try to write, I often feel agitated and nervous. Going for a walk helps with this some, but not enough to write.
Music, however, helps. With the right music (this varies) I’m able to get back into the story and feel that world again. So, if you’re fidgety and restless when you try to write, see if playing some music gets you back in the zone.
I grind my teeth at night. Sometimes, I catch myself clenching my jaw during the day. I struggle with anxiety and have PTSD from childhood trauma and have frequent nightmares. I’m not sure the nightmares are related to teeth grinding, but nighttime teeth grinding is common among people with anxiety. I never really thought this mattered much–even when I cracked a molar one night–but it’s a much bigger problem than I thought. If you grind your teeth, don’t let what just happened to me happen to you.
Basically, the constant grinding has caused the bone tissue in my jaw to build up into little hills. The tissue over these bony ridges is thinner than normal, so when I ate some toast for breakfast one morning, the toast (I’m serious) scratched my mouth and exposed the bone. It’s a small cut, maybe a little less than the size of the tip of a pencil eraser, but it hurts like crazy.
If you have anxiety, talk to your dentist to make sure you aren’t grinding your teeth at night. Ask her if she has any suggestions. I was supposed to get a bite guard a couple of years ago when I cracked my tooth, but my insurance wouldn’t pay for it. I have new insurance that covered sixty percent of it and am getting one made for sleeping, but I don’t know if that affects the bone growth.
I should be okay. I’m using antibiotic rinses and eating a soft diet for two weeks. If it doesn’t heal over, I’ll have to go to an oral surgeon. I had never heard of anything like this, which is why I’m sharing it now. It has nothing to do with writing other than delaying my novel’s release date a bit, but this seemed a good time for a PSA post.
Take care of yourselves–particularly if you’ve been abused. When you’ve lived through those kinds of things, you have to love yourself just that little bit more.
I just wanted to throw this quick tip–that many writers probably already know–out there: music helps. I don’t always write with music. Sometimes I just like to hear my keyboard or the wind outside.
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