Gay Yellen: Block that Gift!

A wonderful friend threw a fabulous launch party for me in 2014 when my first book, The Body Business, was published. And several months later, she bought me a gift I'll never forget. She said that the moment she saw it, she knew I had to have it.

I knew she meant well, so instead of recoiling in horror at the otherwise harmless paperweight, I thanked her for her thoughtfulness. But just to be safe, I hid it in a closet, far away from the room where I write.

The Gift

By the time I finished the second book in The Samantha Newman Mystery Series, the gift was out of my thoughts. That book was such fun to write!

I'd planned to launch Book #3 in 2020. But in early January, an unidentified virus brought me to my knees. It was March before I could sit at my desk to do mundane tasks like open mail and pay bills.

Then my husband's brother died. And my mother died a month later. By May, I found it impossible to concentrate on any project that called for clear thinking. Add to that the general distress we all suffered last year, and. . .

. . . Book #3—all 70,000 words of it from 2019—lay dormant. More than once in my struggles, that elegantly wrapped gift haunted me from the closet. I considered slinging it off the balcony. 

By last summer's end, I managed to return to writing with a short piece for the Jungle Reds and my monthly Stiletto Gang post. Which made me wonder why, if I could  put 500 words together for a blog, I still couldn't manage a few more to complete my book?

Words are words, right? So, what's the difference?

I think I've figured it out.

Writing Fast vs. Writing Deep

In my magazine days, part of my job as managing editor was to oversee the monthly deadlines of our staff writers and contributors. When it was time to lay out an issue, if a scheduled piece was M.I.A., or a writer went rogue, delaying the print run was never an option. I had to find or write a filler. Fast. 

I got good at writing fast. Laser focus and a hard deadline was all it took. Similar to writing a monthly blog post. But it takes much, much more than that to write a book.

Novel writing is deep. It's immersive. It requires sustained concentration, plus the mental energy to wrangle multiple loose threads into a complete, coherent whole. Which was impossible for me to accomplish in 2020.

Really, I'm fine. . .

The Bright Side

These days, with comfort tea to bolster me, I'm back at work on Book #3. I'm glad to be going deep again, and so very grateful to have made it through. Fingers crossed for getting it done by spring.

I hope you survived last year intact, and with enough resilience to weather the ill winds that still batter us. May our beloved country be restored to health. And may you have a sweet 2021.

 

Gay Yellen is a former magazine and book editor. She writes the award-winning Samantha Newman Mystery Series, including The Body Business and The Body Next Door. Book #3 in the series is slated for release in 2021. Gay would love to hear from you, here, on Facebook, or at her website, GayYellen.com.

Refilling the Well

 by Sparkle Abbey

It is finished! We turned in book 8, Raiders of the Lost Bark. Yay!

Once we turn in a book, the question we get asked most often is, “What’s next?”

Besides getting more than five hours of sleep a night?

We refill the creative well.

Writing is exhausting and primarily a solitary occupation. It’s easy to become isolated, spending months thinking, planning, plotting, writing, and rewriting. It requires a significant amount of mental energy to stay focused on a creative project for that long. Yet we only get better by practicing our craft, which means more writing.

By constantly writing, we drain our creativity. At some point we have to give our minds a break. So how do we give back to that source we’ve so thoroughly drained for months?

Well, after a quick celebration with margaritas (you knew that was coming, right?), we begin to take a short mental break from the work and make “refilling the creative well” our main focus. Since we don’t have a beach close by we have to come up with other ideas.

First we reintroduce ourselves to our families who have probably only seen the backside of our heads for weeks. Then we may catch up on all the TV shows our families have recorded for us. Read the books that have been stacked on our nightstands or added to our Kindles while we were on deadline. We try to catch a movie or two, and make a concerted effort to restart our exercise plan of daily yoga and walking. If possible, we’ll attend a writing related workshop or conference. If we had hobbies, we’d probably take them up again after neglecting them for months. 

Our favorite way to refill the well is to spend time with our family and friends. We laugh, make new memories, and experience the world through the eyes of our grandchildren. Is there anything better than that? We don’t think so either.

Then after a couple of weeks, once we’ve caught up on housework, social media, and paying the bills we re-evaluate our goals. We prioritize. Refocus on the steps needed to take us further in our writing journey.

And then we start the madness all over again, because writing is our passion.

What about you? How do you refill your well?

As always, if you'd like to stay up on the latest news, new releases or upcoming appearances, sign up for the Sparkle Abbey newsletter at www.SparkleAbbey.com