Friday, December 27, 2002
For another year, it's over. Okay, well, almost over. There are still the big after-Christmas sales to go, but that's just epilogue and endnotes and suchlike. Allow me a Scroogely moment. Refer to my entry of 12/22 if you're not sure why I'm going on about this. I have to confess a guilty pleasure at hearing that the increase in retail sales this year was the worst in thirty years. Of course, most people are taking that to mean that this year's retail sales were the worst in thirty years, which isn't what it means. Retailers still sold a lot more than they did last year; only the rate of increase was down. No one at CNN or MSNBC is going to a lot of trouble to point out the difference. Growth is down, that's all. And, at some point, some future point which we will one day all eventually be forced to acknowledge, growth has to stop. Whether it's the growth of an economy, or a city, an organism or our own population, a military or a tree, unchecked growth cannot continue indefinitely. Nature imposes ceilings, even if our own selfish imaginations are unable to do so. In time, all things cease to expand (excepting perhaps the universe, depending which theory is presently in vogue). A point of absolute growth is finally reached. I doubt I'm the only person who finds this comforting.
Time may prove me wrong. It has before. I'm only working on historical precedent.
Move along, move along, move along.
If a writer is not writing, actually putting pen to paper, fingertips to keyboard, she is not working. This problem was discussed recently on my phorum discussion boards. And I'm at a point (it often comes just after the holidays) where I am forced to realize that I am not working, not really working. I finished Low Red Moon in August, just before Dragon*Con. I wrote three essays on the cancellation of Farscape in early and mid-September. In October, I wrote a long short story, "Andromeda Among the Stones," for Subterranean Press. In November, well, in November I did some editing and proofreading on The Five of Cups, and I had to deal with this move to Atlanta, but the truth is, in November I didn't write jack shit. In December, so far, I've finished the proofing and editing on "The Five of Cups and written an 8,000+ word preface for the novel. But, again, that's not real writing. I've done no real writing since I finished "Andromeda Among the Stones" back in October. Nothing that matters. Nothing that, by my reckoning, counts as work.
This is one of the reasons I'm stingy with that feeling of accomplishment that everyone seems so enamored with. It's a trap. At least it is for me. Nothing makes me lazier than patting myself on the back. This fall has been a good example. In early September, I looked at the feverish summer I'd spent on Low Red Moon, the nonstop, 7-days a week work that typified the writing of the book, and I was very proud that I'd worked so persistently and so hard and that the novel came out, in my estimation, pretty damned good. And, thought I, you deserve a little break. Just a little one. After all, I'd not had a real break in some time. Maybe a month or so to gather my wits and then set to work on the next novel, Murder of Angels. But a month turned into two months, and then three, and now four. Yes. It's been four months since I finished Low Red Moon. And that means it's time to get off my ass (so to speak, since a writer is pretty much doomed to a life on her ass) and get the gears turning again, the juices flowing, the word count going up and up and up. To stand, again, at the starting point, that steep drop off the edge down to nothing at all, nothing to catch me or break the fall until I make it. The beginning of the quest for The End. One of the most difficult things that I've had to reconcile myself to, as an author, is the way these quests have to continue, one after another, forever, until I die, because that's what writers do. There is no, "And then, having survived the trials of the journey, our hero arrives at last at the fabled The End and there she lives happily ever after." Because there is always another quest waiting. For all my forever. If I look at it that way, though, it can crush me. I have to try to keep my eyes on the next book, not the necessity of all the books that are waiting in my future. Just the next book. That's more than enough. And now it's time to make it start happening, no more excuses, no more back-patting, no more "yeah, but, really, there's been so much crap to deal with," nothing but getting down to the business of writing, taking the first step, falling and having faith I remember how to write the Very Soft Place at the bottom. That is what writers do. The rest of it, the rest of it is just the space in between.
The sun is bright and warm today, though we had lows in the twenties last night and will again tonight. Last night, Jennifer and I met Jim and The Other Jennifer at The Vortex at Little Five Points. A good dinner and conversation to help clear the holidays from my head. And tomorrow my Rhode Islander leaves for here, where she will arrive late on Sunday. And then all the pieces will be in place and the game starts itself over again.
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