Open the Floodgates!
A lot of creative people are somewhat manic. Sadly I’m one of them. My creative bursts happen in cycles. I may furiously produce a hundred thousand words in one month, fifty-five thousand the next, and then ten thousand words for three months in a row. My creative productivity has highs and lows.
Like a lot of creative people I’m also a bit moody. My moods have highs and lows, too. When I’m not producing I find myself frustrated and struggling with depressed feelings. When I’m having an upswing of productivity it’s like I’m on a happy high. To pull myself out of depression, all it usually takes is enthusiasm for a new project or throwing myself into something I’m already working on, if I can get myself to focus long enough to recapture that enthusiasm.
A lot of non-creative people don’t really get how mentally exhausting and how draining creating something can be. It takes a lot of focus and energy, often at the expense of having a life. The project becomes your life until it’s done.
At the beginning of this year I was in a full productivity swing. By summer that had fallen off to a trickle. Like clockwork, with autumn comes the rain of creative thought, refilling my trickling streams and turning them back into rivers. Time for another full productivity swing and just in time, too. Seems my editor is back on track with Into Darkness, so we can hopefully get the book out by October. It should have been out in August. All the folks at Darkerwood are a little behind. My book was just one casualty of the schedule reshuffling. I’m expecting line-editing and proofing by the end of this month and a galley proof the first few weeks in October. With any luck it will be released by Halloween. Whee!
I’m prepped and hopefully ready to go for another upswing cycle. This likely means fewer blog posts. So don’t be alarmed if I’m not posting with the frequency of a downswing.
Thanks for reading!
One Comment
Rufus Opus
Chart your creativity and moodiness against the Mercury Retrogrades and Lunar phases some time for kicks and giggles.
Mercury went direct the 26th, and the new moon hit at about the same time, and I felt like I’d enjoyed the stimulating aroma of about a gram of high grade cocaine for a while this weekend through about Tuesday.