While having a peek at Instagram today I spotted a meme shared by writer_tips. It’s an image of a guy with veins popping out on his forehead, captioned: When you’re a writer and haven’t told anyone for 5 minutes. I immediately wondered if that’s what I look like most days. Ha ha.

Since Monday last I’ve been very active in the writerly arena. I’ve joined The Author’s Guild as an emerging writer and have just barely scratched the surface of all the resources there. It’s all very exciting! Then I linked my Goodreads site to my Amazon author page. I think. Anyway, that’s a cool feature that I had no idea existed when I first e-published my two poetry collections.
If I remember correctly, I set up a reader profile on Goodreads in 2016 then promptly forgot about it. And recently I learned that just glancing at ratings on the site is a very poor way to choose a book to read. (Ratings tell you nothing! Read the reviews at least. But most people probably already know that. Hi. My name is Kathy and I am a late bloomer.) I’ll give it a go, see how I like it.

Next, I finally FINALLY, purchased my site domain. Making that purchase opened another basket of goodies—more resources I haven’t quite delved into. Meanwhile I am all .com and conflicted about not taking the time to make generationkathy look more profesh. Truth is though, I’ve learned the longer I spend planning something the worse it’ll turn out. Or more likely it won’t happen at all. I kept backing off making the actual purchase to make organizational changes and see how that turned out. Four years later …

Also as of Monday last a new project idea caught my attention. In fact, I am officially ankle deep in the new project as of today. I don’t know much about it yet except I like the protagonist, love her name, and I know she’s in quite a bit of trouble. 12k words in and I can only guess at this point her story will be novel length.

Jumping into a project in such a way would probably drive most people crazy but I get a glimpse of a character and start hacking away until the story reveals itself. This is an exciting way to work. About as exciting as allowing someone to lead you blindfolded to a seat on the freakiest roller coaster in the freakiest fun park ever. Outline schmoutline. That’s for the middle of the project along with research and inventing a title.

In all this writerly wonderland of productivity that naysayer in the back of my head keeps shouting impossible questions at me. What if it takes as long to write this book as it did to write Only the Living? Why do you keep making all these writing goals when you have a day job? Are you certain you want to write a novel that contains erotica? Copy edits aren’t complete on your last project, remember copy edits? Synopsis! Where is the synopsis? Are you ever going to clean the guest room or dust anything ever again? DID YOU PAY THE DOCTOR BILLS YET?

My question to the naysayer: Is this why so many writers drink?

Meanwhile, I finished Shell Shaker, by Leanne Howe and hope to write a review on it as well as a few (unrelated) podcasts and essays I’ve enjoyed in the past week. I’m still working on I Sing the Body Electric, by Ray Bradbury. Something about … maybe the compilation of the book … maybe. Anyway, I’m not head over heels with it as a collection. Which is inexplicable because it’s Bradbury for God’s sake. I should be having the time of my life.

This has been a week of chasing whims and making only a handful of real decisions. I’m conflicted about Twitter. Thinking about all the social media obligations that writers are sucked into just makes me kind of tired and Twitter, while it does offer contact with writers and writerly-related folks, it’s more conducive to keeping up with who wants to share their version of political/public awareness than discovering whose book I might want to read next.

I’d rather be discovering whose book I might want to read next.