Never Give Up!

Never give up! Never surrender! - Commander Peter Quincy Taggart, Galaxy Quest

 

 Apparently, I scared a few people with Wednesday's post. I'm not quitting. The point was even in a career you absolutely love, you need a vacation once in a while.

I know too many writers I started with back in 2011 who have disappeared into the ether. They had the dream right in their sweaty palms and lost it. In some cases, reality didn't match the dream. For a few, they did what the set out to do and wrote that one book to say they were an author. In others, they overwhelmed themselves by feverishly writing and publishing as fast as they could until they burned out and never wanted to look at a manuscript again, like a kid puking up his Halloween candy because he devoured it all in one sitting.

The last couple of weeks, I've dreaded opening up my laptop. Partly because the current wip is kicking my ass. Partly because my heroine is being driven mad at a time when I'm struggling with SAD. And partly because I need to recharge the well. I've given up most of my own entertainment in order to get this project completed.

It doesn't help that I'm doing a publishing challenge. I hate quitting with a passion, but I don't want to sacrifice my love of writing on the altar of completing this challenge. I realized my toes were hanging off the edge of a cliff, and if I weren't careful, the rest of me could fall in the chasm.

No one wants that. Especially me.

So this isn't about quitting. This is the proverbial vacation. After a day or three, I'll get the itch to crack open the laptop despite myself. And that's what I want in the long run.

Besides, you can't get rid of me that easily.

Burnout

I find myself needing to take my own damn advice. I need a break from writing before I totally burn myself out.

For the last year, I've been publishing something new every single month. On the months I published something I'd previously written under my name, I still released something new under Alter Ego.

And I was doing this in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Despite all the insanity of COVID, DH and I found the perfect house. GK met his first love. A lot of good things still happened, right?

Except it's all stressful. Good stress. But still stress. Which means it causes a cascade of physical problems and exhaustion. Sheer exhaustion. Exhaustion couple with SAD (seasonal affective disorder) means despite sleeping 12-13 hours, I wake up still exhausted.

In fact, I'm so tired writing is starting to become a chore instead of a joy. And that's a major symptom of burnout.

Burnout can lead to a particularly insidious form of writer's block. One where you have plenty of ideas. You just don't want to execute them.

That doesn't mean I won't be writing. I'll finish the next Justice and 888-555-HERO novels. I'm putting together a couple of short story collections of things already written. But then I need to take a month or two off before I totally lose my mojo.

I guess what I want to tell other writers is not to keep running faster and faster on the hamster wheel of doom to the point where you lose all the joy in your art. Because yes, it is art. For me, it is an act of creation that's just as important as cooking or painting or raising children.

That stupid hamster wheel is not worth losing the things that make life wonderful. Know when to take a break.

Coronavirus Pandemic Day 342 - Winter Storm Warnings

The winter holiday viral surge is finally slowing down, vaccines are being delivered and administered, but the stats are still atrocious. 27,914,244 known cases in the U.S. and 490,076 known dead from COVID-19.

Winter Storm Uri passed through in the wee hours of the morning, and Winter Storm Viola inches up on us. The flurries of an hour ago have given way to a steady snowfall.

The march of winter storms since the beginning of February are slowing down shipping of the vaccines across the country. All's not lost. The snow is also keeping people home.

I was hoping Ohio would be in Phase 4 for vaccine distribution by March, which is when I'd be eligible, but it doesn't look like it'll happen until May. Therefore, I'll continue the mask wearing, the social distancing, and the staying home for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, I have a novel to finish with a warm puppy in my lap and snow quietly falling outside my window.

I Love Musicals!

Then there's the story from the antagonist's point-of-view.

Mid-Winter Wonder

The temps finally dropped, and we got snow. This was the scene DH shot outside a family room window of the new house Monday afternoon.

Jane Doe isn't the first white-tail we've seen in the backyard. DH and Bella surprised two other deer during a midnight constitutional two weeks ago. And there were two sets of deer tracks after last night's fresh inch of powder when I took Bella out for her morning constitutional yesterday.

Most days, I have Ebony, Jett, Rusty, and Gaga to keep me entertained. The squirrels' latest hijinks involve drift diving in the snow banked against our shed. But they're too fast for me to capture on camera.

I'd like to blame the critters for having to delay the latest release for two weeks, but alas, it is all human problems. Instead, the animals give me a little joy in order to keep writing.

As long as the damn squirrels stay outside of my house.

I Love Musicals!

Particular those related to a certain favorite childhood book.

Coronavirus Pandemic Day 328 - Soft White Blanket of Winter

People in the U.S. are taking COVID-19 a little more seriously. I see more masks being worn in our town when I go out. Most people with the opportunity to obtain the vaccine are doing so. The numbers in Ohio and our country are trending downward.

However, the numbers aren't dipping as fast nationwide. Total known COVID-19 infections in the U.S. reached 26,440,519 today. Total known deaths have reached 446,267.

So far, my immediate family has not been hit by the virus, and I knock on wood that it stays that way. But people around us are starting to get a little stir crazy. I understand the feeling. A week from today will mark a year since the last time I was at a movie theater, which is why there hasn't been any Monday Movie Mania posts.

Nor am I going anywhere anytime soon thanks to Winter Storm Orlena. She made up for our lack of snowfall this year by dumping five inches on us between 10 p.m. Saturday night and all day Sunday. Now that we're on the backside of the storm, we're getting lake effect snow off of Erie.

So, I'm sitting on my recliner with a puppy nestled on my lap. She sleeps while I watch snow fall in the backyard. The squirrels are nestled in their nests, and both sound and motion are muffled in a blanket of white.

It finally feels like winter has arrived.

I Love the '00's!

A '70's hit remade into a hip-hop extravaganza!

Dealing with the Crazies

The first month of the new year isn't over yet, and the country is dealing with a pandemic, an attempted coup, ongoing social injustice, and an economic collapse. That's only the beginning.

 I won't even get into what a group of Redditors did to Wall Street hedge funds this week. Which personally, I find hysterically funny that a group of nobodies played the stock market better than the brokers.

However, there's a lot of fear in the air because of the chaos. I'm a writer and publisher, so I see a lot of it in the my industry, even thought the fear exists in all fronts. Remember Yoda's line from The Phantom Menace? "Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering."

What Yoda left out is how the three emotions can also drive people crazy. You see it in people's refusal to wear masks even though they've been proven to save lives. You see it in the people who attacked the U,S, Capitol because one man suggested they march down to Congress and show the senators and representatives how they feel. Oh, and let's kill some cops while we're at it. You see it in Wall Street bitching because day traders manipulated the stock the same way Wall Street did to the tune of $3B a la Trading Places.

So yeah. The Crazies. Being cooped up in our houses for the last year hasn't helped any.

What am I doing? I'm living in other worlds at the moment. The Justice Universe in particular. I may not be able to do anything here, but Anthea...

Nevermind. This is the book where she goes crazy, too.

Audible and Its Return Policy

Audiobooks. Listeners love them, but they are fucking expensive to produce, especially if you're an indie author. That's why I haven't done any audiobooks yet.

ACX, Amazon's production arm, introduced a split- royalty program for the writer and the voice talent. However, many books don't make back their production costs. So a lot of voice talent refuse to do the split payments anymore.

I can't blame them. When I looked into the costs for producing an audiobook version of A Question of Balance, I was looking at $2,000.

Minimum.

That's a lot of work for little or no return.

But it's Audible's latest stunt that has the writers and publishers up in arms. Amazon ended up in a class-action suit filed by customers for how they charged and refunded monies. So executives at Audible went too far the other way. Customers could return the audiobook any time for any reason, or no reason at all.

For the price of one audiobook, customers could return and buy audiobooks multiple times. Suddenly, monies that had been already paid to authors and publishers were being charged against their accounts with no record of any returns.

Not only did the policy exist, Audible actively encouraged customers to use the company as a library for the price of one audiobook.

First of all, I have no problem with libraries or people using actual libraries. However, the writers and publishing believed they had made sales. Months later Audible then claimed the writers and publishers owed them money. There was no explanation why.

Transparency seems to be Audible's big problem.

And this isn't the first time they've ended up on writers' shit list. Two years ago, the Association of American Publishers went after Audible for showing the book's text while the audio played. Audible's parent company Amazon had already been in legal trouble for using the Kindle's text-to-speech function to do the opposite, read the book aloud.

The Authors Guild has teamed up with indie writers to pressure Audible to not dock the writers and publishers for returns. However, Audible hasn't delivered full accountability for the sales lost.

In my humble opinion, there's a recurring theme here. Amazon is turning into another conglomerate looking to screw whoever they can, just like Walmart did after their founder's death. It's a shame, but there's an end to everything. This is the chance for some other company to take over the audiobook field.

And I think it's already starting.