My mood continues to bounce all over the place in accordance to how my revisions are doing on any given day. Today I’m doing well, but that’s mostly because I haven’t really started yet. Sigh. Avoidance behavior. I’ve learned over the last year though to pay attention to my avoidance instincts, because they usually indicate that there’s something which I know is wrong, subconsciously, with the draft, but that my conscious mind has glossed over the problem. It’s very easy to have a “plan” for what comes next, but for your plan to be boring. Not sure if that’s what is happening right at this exact moment (I still experience normal procrastination too), but it could be!

Revisions are due on August 1st, and I’m anxious to turn this around and get back to other projects. I have a novel for adults I’m working on. I’ve also toyed with the idea of writing a screenplay. I’ve never been a fan of the idea of writing for the screen simply because it exists or because it’s a more popular form; I’d only write for the screen if I thought I’d have something to say. And since my interest with novels has primarily been with voice, which is generally pretty lacking in screen- and teleplays, I’ve thought that the screen had nothing to offer me. But in the last year I’ve watched ALOT of movies (sixty since July 1, 2017), and I’ve started to become more interested in the blankness of the screen–the way that you don’t know why things are happening or what the characters are thinking.

I don’t know. It’s a thought. Attempting to have a career in writing for the screen is even more punishing than attempting to have a career in the writing of prose fiction, but I just think it’d be fun. In some ways, the remoteness of ever actually selling anything is freeing and makes it easier to work.

Every time a friend of mine sells a book, I kind of sigh, because I know that for them writing is going to become much harder, at least for awhile. It’s almost inescapable. The transition from writing purely for yourself to writing within the marketplace is so punishing. I think this, more than anything else, kills writing careers. It just stops being fun. And if you’re getting paid, that’s one thing, but usually you have to struggle to make money too, so if it’s not fun, and it’s not remunerative, and you’re not particularly proud of your work (because pride in your work falls when the fun-ness falls), then why do it?

I think I’ve overcome this hurdle when it comes to prose fiction, but you can never fully return to paradise. After you sell a book, you’re never again as free as you were when you were unpublished.