Monday, September 28, 2009

Taking a Break, Sorta


I am taking a break from novel writing. It seems I am forever and always writing a novel. That is not a bad thing. However, eventually you become sorta burned out. I have never understood writers who say they have writer's block. I have more plots running through my head than I have time to work on the. True, there are times when the words for a particular project has difficulty flowing from my literary pen, but when that happens I go to another and usually that is the one I was meant to write in the first place. At this time in my "career" I have embarked on a different kind of pause, or retreat when it comes to writing. I have ten books published. Since I finally was beaten down and had enough rejection slips from the New York Publishers to paper a large room with, I opted for the self publishing bit. Lulu was where I went. All of my books are novels with the exception of Misdemeanors & Felonies: A Memoir. Since my financial situation is limited, receiving only a little social security check each month I was not in a position to pay $300-500 for a professional proofreader, the result being that my novels have typos, grammar and other assorted problems. So! I have embarked on a "cleansing" of the novels. I am sure there will still be a few errors here and there, because a person proofreading his own work is a no-no, except in the case of first, maybe second drafts. By the time you have it, in your opinion, as good as you can get it and are ready for publication, that is the time to find a good word doctor. In the meantime I write poems, book reviews, etc., whatever comes to me, but now novels. I honestly think I need to stay away from novels for a longer duration than I have in the past. Working on the published one's will give me something to do so I won't be tempted to start another book. That has been my problem in the past when I felt the need to take a vacation from the novels; boredom. That is because for a long time now, I have not had any other outside activities with which to occupy my mind. When Dottie was still with me it was a full-time job seeing after her and running the necessary errands I needed to take care of her, and of course, me. It has been six months since she has passed, and instead of trying to seek other venues to occupy me when I wasn't writing, or didn't want to write, I hunkered down and went at writing with a vengeance. Partly, I know, to keep my mind occupied with other things except her memory. It didn't work all that great, because a large percentage of that writing was Dottie-related. Even the novel Unholy Pursuit had many references of her in it. Anyway, here I am, plugging away on the corrections of the published novels and hoping I will stay healthy long enough to get the rest of the ideas of novels on paper and published. I guess I am pushing it, but I need another ten years. At least.

1 comment:

  1. It sounds like a plan to me. I do know what it's like to have more then one story going on inside the brain at a time. Not settled into my own space yet so they are just bouncing around in there.

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