Drawing from the Well
Queries Sent: 6
Total Queries: 47
Rejections: 29 (+3)
Scenes Mapped: 19
Total Scenes: 435
I’ve made some progress since my last blog post. That really has been my focus these last two weeks: progress. I’ve rededicated myself to querying and writing (well, mapping for now but writing is writing) and I’m seeing the fruits of that labor, at least on the writing end. I’ve made it up through my climax beginnings on all storylines and now get to dive into the climax itself. I’ve planned out the major set pieces and am ready to dive into the scene mapping process.
Additionally, the last few days, I’ve been preparing for PitMad. I have been preparing mentally and emotionally for months but the mentors were just announced Monday so since then, I’ve been active. I’ve reviewed all the mentors and found the ones that I think are a best fit for me. Now I just need to get their contact info down. I need to research PitMad itself a little more because every time I think I’ve got it down, I find something that confuses me all over again. That’ll be tonight’s exercise.
Filling the Well
Bloodwitch: 57%
The Unbound: 44%
The Bible: 70%
Sylvanas Windrunner: Edge of Night: 100% (Book 27 of #ProjectBookworm2019)
I’ve done a little reading in the last two weeks, but my focus has not been on it. Well, my focus has not been on fiction. I’ve been relatively dedicated to reading my Bible, more so than I have been in months. I understand now why I fizzled out before: there is a LONG depressing section of the Bible where the nation of Israel just would not listen and they were finally cast out into bondage to Babylon. It’s a rough read, but I’m making my way through. At 70% complete, I’m already thinking about what my next study will be: a multi-version, single-book study. I’m thinking Romans.
I hope that getting back into my blog more often (which I’ll discuss below) will help reinvigorate my thirst to read.
The other cool thing that happened recently was that, for the first time in my life, I listened to someone’s interests and lent them a book! It was so exciting. I was talking to someone I knew through Facebook (really through my wife [no, that still isn’t getting old 18 months in]) and thought of Panacea, which I’m only about halfway through. With so many other books to read and with so many already in progress, I decided that he should borrow it and read it because he would get more enjoyment out of it in the short-term than I would.
So you won’t see that book on here for a while, but it’s for a great cause. The others up there are on the chewing block (that’s the combination of chopping block and the fact that I want to “chew” through them and get more books read).
Polishing the Well
My poor daughter (NOT pictured above) had a high fever last night which kept my wife up most of the night tending to her. As I tweeted last night, 102.6 is NOT a good temperature and it got higher from there for short periods of time. Hopefully it has passed in the night and she’ll be back to normal after a day of rest.
Well Chat
The Benefits and Consequences of Fiery Passion
It finally happened: I burned out.
Part of this was the unstructured summer, but I can’t blame it all on that. Part of it was Patch 8.2 in WoW, which is phenomenal, but I can’t blame it all on that either. Part of it was throwing myself into work to continue evolving to the best manager I can be, but I can’t use that as a scapegoat. What it comes down to is that I spread myself too thin.
Let’s talk about fire for a minute. Real fire. Fire is mostly super-excited oxygen. To get that oxygen, the fire needs fuel. Wood, gasoline, fabric, and just about every other material known to man can be used as fuel for fire. But how does a fire keep burning? The fuel can’t be completely consumed.
This is primarily a volume vs. surface area thing. I’m not going to get into the physics of it (you’re welcome) but the thinner the fuel is spread, the faster it will be consumed and the fire will burn out. With the proper arrangement of the fuel, though, that fire can burn steadily for a long time.
And now we’ve come to the heart of it: fire is just a force of nature. Passion is just a force of humanity. If it is properly arranged, it can power a human engine to accomplish incredible things but if it is spread too thin by application to too many tasks, it fizzles out because there isn’t enough to go around. That’s the risk-reward or benefit-consequence proposition of fiery passion.
As it applies to me the last month or so, my writing focus had gone in so many directions that it was spread too thin. I was so consistent, so diligent with my morning blog writing. I used it as inspiration and personal accountability to keep reading and writing, keep filling the well so I could use it and then USING it. Then in July, I got over-ambitious. I wanted to write a series of blog series. I was going to do something I’d never done before and it was going to be great.
I fell flat on my face.
Readership was (and still is) down. No one was interested in education. That’s not what you signed up for when you started following my blog. You signed up for my thoughts to what’s related to my writing journey. You signed up for me. So we’re back to that.
On top of that, the other factors I mentioned came to bear as well. Whatever you think, there is no separation between my personal life and my writing life. There’s a push-and-pull dynamic where if I have time for writing, then my personal life is going well, but when my personal life gets intense, writing falls by the wayside. I have enough avenues of creation that it takes a true crisis for the plume to truly go dry, but my defense mechanism is to start cutting off the branches of my creative limb. That’s right, the blog was one of those branches. That’s the only reason I’ve made progress in lieu of writing my blog.
Some authors would say this isn’t healthy, that you should write every day. There’s something to be said for that, but my family is my life so if they need me, I’m out. And I’m okay with that. Like I said, I kept writing, it just wasn’t the blog.
The freeing part about this is that I was able to break free of the mindset that I had to blog every day. It’s nice to do that, nice to say that I HAVE DONE IT, but I put entirely too much pressure on myself to do it.
The kids are back in school now and we’re getting back into a groove so guess what’s back! Expect to see more blog posts from me all this fall, but it may not be every day. I’ll try, I’ve got the time set aside for it, but if I miss one, I’m not going to lament it. Blogging is great, but I’m an author so it doesn’t count unless I WRITE THE DAMN BOOK! So I’m off to do that now and will catch all of you tomorrow.
Welcome back.
May the tide carry you to safer shores.
BSG