Recently I came across an article in an AARP publication. A writer mentioned that retirement took all the edge off "writing for publication". His youthful "juices" were dried up. I feel the prune juice running out of me too and may soon need diapers. The dude in the AARP publication had made a living with his writing whereas all my poetry and short story publications have been in the literary world of non-paying little mags & small presses. My goal "to get someone other than myself to publish a novel of mine" before I die is all out of whack according to Jung who said that one ought to make money first and become philosophical in later life. I may have mentioned this in a previous post. Who knows? Seems to me I've been philosophical all my life, seeking the meaning to existence in my off hours.
An interesting aspect about writing speculative fiction concerns too little or not enough. Manning, as you know, is set 250 years in the future. I gotta surround the story with a future culture and that means I gotta decide how much information about the future to present to readers. Enough to keep them interested or too much and they get bored and quit reading?
By the way, I'm currently lunching on a smoothie: carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, frozen strawberries, banana slices, a touch of prune juice, vanilla almond milk, protein powder (since I left out walnuts) and three packs of sweetener. I swear, Granny Thomas, you can't mix up anything bad tasting when you chop it down to its atomic size.
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| Michael J. |
Tired this morning and not up for creative writing. Old age supplies me with droopy days as well as peppy days, and "being 75" doesn't ask me if I want what it's giving me on any given day. Of course, at my age, with my goal to get someone other than myself to publish my work, every delay, every missed day of writing feels like a deep forest deadfall.
However, I've decided recently I'm not going to force myself to write when I'm groggy and sub-par physically, and further, I'm not going to get down in the dumps over it. I've decided to accept those days when I'm not up to the creative task.
Acceptance is a good tool for all problematical conditions. Michael J. Fox in my most recent AARP magazine says that he finds his state of mind on any given day is directly proportional to his acceptance of his condition and inversely proportional to his expectations. I'm all over that, Michael.
This morning my obvious problem is that I didn't follow my new sleeping/waking regime. I was not accepting a condition of modern life and angrily barking late on commentary pages at ghosts and goblins. If I don't get any writing done today, I'll accept that and try to enjoy a sweetly relaxed day today. Maybe I'll go grocery shopping with my wife. Being in love with her is something not at all hard to accept.
