What a Year.

Yes, I know it’s only March.

Hello, my friends.

Now, I say “friends” despite the fact that I just checked the numbers of visits on this page. Quite frankly, I think this thing almost serves as a journal and a monument to “I know nobody’s asking, but I haven’t given up yet”, but that’s neither here nor there. Just in case some new visitor to this website sees fit to stumble in off the streets of the Wild West (aka Twitter and….well, we’ll not talk about the other thing), I’m going to do my best to act chipper and seem clever enough to keep them around.

Do I think this will work? No. Then again nothing really ever does, so it’s nothing I can’t handle.

This year started off poorly with some rather miserable results in my personal life. I won’t go into them (hence the ‘personal’ part), but suffice it to say that I’m still trying to get my bearings. As always, I decided to react in a psychologically healthy manner- by literally running away from my problems- and signing up for a marathon in September, because as a 6’3” and 210 pound writer, that seemed like a spectacular idea. Will I successfully run away from sadness? Unlikely, since I’ve been running on a treadmill and the marathon map seems to indicate that it is a literal circle, but it might work. Maybe I’ll learn to fly so I seem a little less like a hamster on a wheel.

The upside to sadness is that I’ve been more creative of late. I’ve punched out a couple poems and two of my better short stories in the last 2 months while also slogging through the editing of my trilogy. Let me tell you, when it comes to editing, 1300 pages of fixing feels exactly as long as it sounds. The truth is that I tend to work better in negative headspace which, as I’m typing it out, really sounds pretty terrible and not at all good for the psyche, but I digress. If I’m ever going to make my living as a writer (Note: Increasingly unlikely by the day), then I should probably hang onto that darkness for just a little while longer. It might yet serve me well even if my characters seem to be in quite a bit of peril these days.

Speaking of, I’ve been struggling with the ‘writer’ thing lately. This is of utmost concern to me as my creative drive has been what’s kept me going through the bad times, but I’m beginning to realize that I couldn’t have stacked the deck against myself more effectively if I’d tried. Writing is hard. Making a living on it seems damn near impossible sometimes. So I’m stuck sitting around, dreaming up lives for characters while I try to find a direction for my own. What is the purpose in creating if no one’s able to see it, after all? Hell, I’ve even thought about self-publishing my trilogy. (which in the past I’ve thought of as being the ultimate white flag). At least that way someone would read it, right?

So then I ask myself, would it be better to suffer along the road of endless edits and searches for agents and publishers or just toss it out there on my own? In terms of immediate emotional gratification, the latter definitely leads the race but then what has it all been for? I could maybe make a couple grand off book sales that way, but then I’d be no closer to writing for a living. Hell, I’d be much farther away given that I just sold my trilogy for some magic beans. But then at least people would read them. People would read them even if it meant I’d have to start all over again as a 30 year old man on a completely new story.

I don’t know. Writing is hard and deciding what to do with it is even harder. I want my stories to matter and be seen and I know I need some heft to make that happen. Not to mention, with having to work a full time job it takes two to three years to write a book that takes me eight months when I’m just writing. So do I self-publish and feel like I took the easy way out? Or do I continue the struggle and hope there’s a light at the end of the tunnel? I haven’t decided yet. Hell, I might not ever decide and hope instead that I luck into something special. Crazier things have happened and “Lucky” is my nickname.

Who knows. I don’t know what to do. But I know what I am- I’m a writer. And I need to keep going because that’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to be.

EDIT: As I finished this blog post, I got another rejection letter. How lovely.