Planet Pailly

Today’s post is part of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, a blog hop where insecure writers like myself can share our worries and offer advice and encouragement.  Click here to find out more about IWSG and see a list of participating blogs.

As some of you already know, I’ve been going through some stuff.  It started back in December, and the real life problems have just kept coming ever since, one after the other.  It’s been truly unfair.

But I’m recovering, finally.  Those real life problems that have been plaguing me have been resolved, most of them for the better, a few for the worse, but at least they’re resolved and I’m able to move on.

The challenge now is that, during my times of trouble, I seem to have picked up a whole bunch of new writing insecurities, and a few old insecurities have resurfaced as well.  It’s not so much my writing process that I’m worried about but rather my ability to turn writing into a profitable and sustainable career.

Fortunately my muse, who came to my rescue in last month’s IWSG post, has returned to give me some sage advice.

So is my muse right?  I sure hope so.  I’m still dealing with a lot of anxiety, most of it financial in nature, because of the turmoil I just went through.  But I’ve promised my muse that I’ll set that aside, at least while I’m writing, and have faith that so long as I put my best into my stories everything else will somehow turn out okay.

P.S.: I want to mention, because a few people have been asking, that I really wanted to participate in the A to Z Challenge again this year.  I had a plan.  A really good plan. But given the circumstances, I think it’s best if I save it for next year.

If you don’t already know what a paracosm is, please check out my previous post about it. It’s a cool concept, especially for writers.

For today’s episode of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, I’ve decided to give you a glimpse into my own paracosmic world. I’ll admit, it’s not a happy place right now, but with the help of my muse it’s getting better.

For this month’s episode of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, I’m going to turn the floor over to my muse. She has something to say, and perhaps it’s something your muse would like to hear.

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Over the last few months, I’ve had trouble getting my writer to be productive. Many of the juiciest story ideas I’ve brought him had to be put on hold because real life keeps getting in the way.

As I reported in my previous Insecure Muse’s Support Group post, I’ve had some success using writing as a distraction from those real world problems. Unfortunately it’s been sporadic success. Some days my writer would get thousands of words down on paper. Other days, I’d find him like this:

To be honest, I think a lot of the problems my writer is dealing with are less severe than he thinks they are, but the fear and the stress still feel real to him. Writing helps calm him down. There’s no doubt about that. But sometimes my writer is so emotionally drained that he just can’t write no matter how badly he needs to.

So I’d like to ask my fellow muses (writers, you can chime in too if you want): how do you know when to push your writer harder and when to let him or her take some time to recover?

For this month’s episode of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group, I… actually, I’ve been going through some things. I’m not quite prepared to talk about it yet. So instead, I’m going to turn the floor over to my muse. She has something to say, and perhaps it’s something your muse would like to hear.

* * *

My fellow muses, I think we all know how our writers can be. They live out there… out there in the real world, and sometimes they get caught up in their real life problems. They have chores to do. And jobs. They have to eat sometimes, and they get sleepy and pass out every night.

It’s hard for us, as ethereal beings living in the eternity of imaginary space, to tell when our writers really do need to deal with this “real life” stuff and when they’re just making excuses to skip writing. Personally, I’m really suspicious of this “job” thing. It takes up a lot of my writer’s time, and all he gets for it is something called “money.”

But recently, I had the opportunity to turn the tables on all those distractions out there in the real world. And I took that opportunity.

Now, rather than using his real life problems as an excuse to skip writing, my writer is using writing as an excuse to not deal with his real life problems! Everybody wins!

Okay, maybe I’m not too proud of myself for this one. But sometimes we muses need to be sneaky. We need to be manipulative. We need to do whatever it takes to coerce our writers into writing. And whatever else is going on in my writer’s life right now, at least he’s getting his writing done. As a muse, that’s really all I’m supposed to care about. Right?