IWSG - We Persevere

I'm late, but I'm here! The problem with working in finance is that things really hit in the last and first week of the month.

It's the first Wednesday of June, which means it's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group.

Created by Alex J. Cavanaugh, the IWSG is a place where writers can come together to share their insecurities and support each other. Anyone can join. Simply click on Alex's name and your blog to the list.

This month's co-hosts are Victoria Marie Lees, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and C. Lee McKenzie.

The optional question is: Do most of your story ideas come from one place (the news, dreams, etc.), or do they hit from all over the place?

Mine definitely come from all over the place. The news, conversations, various media (movies, books, TV shows, podcasts), etc. I rarely get ideas from dreams, but I've worked through story issues I was having in them! It just takes one little spark, often a throwaway line or item, to get an idea rolling.

I was going to pre-write this post and had something to talk about, and then BAM time caught up with me and I got caught up in some work stuff and forgot to write the post last night and now I don't remember what I wanted to talk about. Disappointing. But I'm trying some new things with my work and writing schedules, and I'm hoping to take a day or so to pre-write monthly posts here and on my other blog. Wish me luck! Changing routines is hard.

BUT good news! Not huge good news, but I've been writing more consistently as I try to shift some work things around. Could I be writing more? Yes. But unfortunately life things have to cut into the writing side of things instead of the actual money-making side of things. For now.

Submission stats for May:

7 short story submissions

6 novel queries

0 acceptances

1 short story rejection

1 query rejection

You guys, it feels amazing to really be back in it. Everything has been a limp, and life circumstances keep derailing me, but I've never fully given it all up. I got my office all cleaned up and ready to get some novel writing done (I do the short stories on my laptop and novels on my Mac on Scrivener). And even a bunch of not-so-great stuff happened and I still wrote through it.

The bad stuff? A publisher defaulted on paying authors for three different anthologies and didn't send out our copies. It was a nicely paying market, so that's a hit, but it's easy to say you'll pay out a high amount per word if you're not going to pay. Then I was supposed to have a story come out last month and...crickets. I was supposed to have been paid in the fall as per the contract, but that was also crickets. I wrote to the publisher and she's ignoring me, even though we're Facebook friends and I can see her posting. So I'm calling that one. She breached the contract, so that story is mine to send out again. I discovered that I most likely need a partial knee replacement. All those knee problems I've been having? It turns out the cartilage is gone. I have zero cartilage in my knee and have been bone-on-bone for who knows how long. So there's significant bone bruising, my meniscus is torn and a flap is hanging down where it's not supposed to be, and I have fluid in the bone marrow and around the rest of the knee. So I've been justified in being in pain. Unfortunately, it may also indicate that I have an auto-immune disorder we've been monitoring for since my twenties since testing showed I had the gene, and it's not a great one to have (basically, it will continue dining on my cartilage/joints). And my nephew one day last week woke up paralyzed and is in the hospital relearning how to move. They have not been able to figure out what it is, though they have now ruled out the worst case things they initially told us about.

That was a big ol' negative dump, BUT my daughter who has had significant health issues for years now and who opted to take a gap year after she graduated high school so she could just focus on all the medical appointments has registered for college!! She starts in August. And she's finally getting to do MasterDrive so she can get her license (all this was also delayed by the health issues, though we have had her driving on a permit with us when possible). Her AP scores are allowing her to skip a bunch of 101 classes and getting her some credit, so that's awesome, too. 

Anyway, the point of all that is that I'm still going this time instead of letting it derail me. We persevere. That's what we've got to do, right? I'm truly hoping some good things happen in my writing career this year, and I'm working on making that happen. 

It's also been awhile since I joined any local writing group things, despite how active I was before, so I went up to Denver to join the Denver Horror Collective at an event called Hearse Con. It was a nice event (there are so many cool hearses and some people have themed them), I sold some books, and I got to hang out with other writers in person for the first time in a long time. So I'm hoping to do more with them in the near future. I failed to take pictures, though! Not something I usually fail. (Also, I found a lens I used to have, but broke, on sale used and I bought it for myself, so I'm hoping to lean into my photography some, too. Including possibly framing a few out and selling them when I sell books. We'll see.)

I'll be selling books at the Creepatorium again in August for a local author's book launch!

That's all for my late IWSG post. See you next month!

How do you move yourself past the bad things in life to keep writing? What do you do to get your creative juices flowing? What are your current insecurities? Where do you get your ideas? Have you gotten together with other writers lately?

May you find your Muse.