Sticking To Deadlines

As far as the writing plans for the Labor Day Weekend panned out...  not so well.  In short, I'm scrapping what I did write (which wasn't much).  And focusing on getting a few other projects prepped for later.

Writers Block.  I hate it.  I have it.

There was a time when I spent a lot of it (time, that is) writing.  Mostly fanfiction, back in the Nineties during my love affair with the television show The X-Files.  Gossamer has an archive of most of what I wrote in terms of fanfic.  For normal writing, regular fiction writing, I was focused on short stories mostly for writing contests.  Eventually I coalesced the more coherent shorts into a smallish anthology Last of the Grapefruit Wars, which I published in 2003 through a Print-on-Demand service Xlibris.

And since then?

Most of my ambitious projects - actual novel writings, additional short story attempts for contests - don't go very far or very well.  I've tried the 3-Day Novel contests for years to no avail...  I've joined the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), and while the last two years I've "won" the months by hitting the 50,000 word counts I've yet to complete either novel into an acceptable conclusion.  This year was practically a miracle seeing me get some stories - Welcome to Florida and The Hero Cleanup Protocol - self-published...

I could explain it away if I was distracted by work or by family.  But I've been unemployed full-time the last two years (going on three), and my family is mostly off doing their things while I'm struggling with mine (and family have never really been major motivators in my writing projects, to be honest).

The unemployment issue is what worries me most: when I was working, I was stimulated with library work - research, above all - and that stimulation helped with getting some works off the word processor.  Now, stressing out over each submitted resume and cover letter seems to dull my interest in getting writing work done.  Even suggestions that I go into freelancing work (for websites like Guru or Examiner.com for example) somehow don't appeal to me even though there's a huge part of me that does.  It's even part of the reason why I don't blog as much as I should: if I kept more active, I'd think I'd get more traffic here.

As for future projects... there's obviously NaNo in November.  I've been given a heads-up about a 24-Hour Comics contest, hosted this year on Saturday October 1.  I am/will be tempted to join in that.

Wish me luck.

And The Winner Is... PIE!

Wait.
Damn you Carl Sagan and your obsession with pies!!!
Actually, the early vote results are for the "unemployed insomniac" plotline.  That means my primary writing objective today shall be a story I titled Midnight Blues.  I consider it an attempt to create a new subgenre: the Recession Noir.  Hopefully I can get a chapter or two done today... off to work.  Happy Labor Day to all of you who voted!  And to those who didn't vote... the pie was crumbly.