inspiration, overwhelm, patience

The RWA conference is going on right now. I’ve never attended before, and I’m appreciating how much work went into it, especially given the challenge of holding such a large and involved event online. Kudos to everyone involved.

Since yesterday, I’ve been listening to online presentations by romance authors and hearing all sorts of good information on writing, marketing, agents, and so on.

Too much good information, honestly.

And I’m getting anxious. It’s info-overload.

I feel like I need to redesign my website, send out a newsletter, and write a whole new series all at once. Or I should have done it already. Where’s that high concept I want?

And—

I just crashed.

I do this. Do you? Do you get a surge of inspiration, get revving to go, then look around and think, How on earth am I going to get there from here? I have so much to do! Too much.

So.

Here’s blog post to process all these ideas. All this inspiration.

A blog post on patience. On centering. On focus.

On what do I do when I have too many ideas. Those times, like right now, when I’m trying to listen to a webcast on plotting, read a book on craft, write a romance book, listen to music that inspires a different book, buy a new refrigerator (or answer my husband’s questions about so doing) and fix lunch all at the same time.

What do I do?

I scream.

Then—

I stop.

I just stop.

And I go back to the basics. I turn off the noise. I can’t focus on all this media at once. I can only do one thing at a time, perhaps to background music.

Then, I focus on what’s most important. Julia Cameron says, “As artists, we do much better trying to keep things simple.”

Keep things simple. That means I need to focus on the most important thing.

For me, writing is the most important thing (after basic health and safety and my family, obvs).

I have to remember to “get my reps in,” as James Clear says. Action, not motion, cures anxiety.

In other words, the only thing that cures my writing anxiety is physically writing. I need to take action. Get words down on paper. Pull out the laptop or piece of paper and start pouring my brain out on the screen or notebook. Moving my fingers. Getting my ink out of my pen.

Action in this instance does not mean the following: thinking about plot, reading books on writing, attending lectures on how to market, or reading other people’s books or watching movies to analyze structure. Those are all important, but if I’m overwhelmed, they don’t help me.

I need the patience to know I’ll get to all of those. That I can do everything. Just not at once. To get the patience, I write down my notes on how to improve my website, my newsletter, my search for an agent and set them aside with the knowledge that I will get to them if they are important. (Thank you, David Allen for strategies on getting things done.)

Instead, all I can do to stop being so overwhelmed is to focus on writing, which is the only thing I need to do. The thing on which everything else stands.

The thing that cures my anxiety.

“Not working is what makes an artist crazy.” Again, Julia Cameron comes to my rescue today. “There is dignity in work.” In other words, the solution is to focus on the writing.

(She also recommends comparing ourselves solely to ourselves. That soothes overwhelm, too. I can just turn inward and look at my own projects. I invite you to do so for yourself, too.)

So, in that vein: this is what I’m working on. I’m comparing myself to myself. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, I invite you to focus on yourself as well.

New Adult Novella: (Almost) completed project. I wrote a 40,000 word novella to be published February 3, 2021 (my husband’s birthday) in the All American Boy project. I have the cover and title and the draft done. It’s just being edited. The story is about two high school grads in a small Sonoma town who have been dancing around each other since Freshman year, secretly falling for each other. They finally have their first kiss and are about to go to being more than friends, when they’re stopped in their tracks. She has to choose between him and her dreams or her family that needs her. I really love these characters and what they go through to get to their love.

Contemporary romance/third book in the Love in Translation series (Penumbra): 100,000 words written. For the past two weeks I’ve been focusing on this book, trying to get it edited by the end of the month. It needs more time than that, but I’m not giving up on it because I love this story. This is an interracial couple, friends to lovers, hiking along the Camino de Santiago in Spain. It follows Sol and Sombra. This is my focus today.

Contemporary romance/The Lighthouse. This book I spent all year last year writing and trashed because it wasn’t good enough. I’ve rewritten half of it, and I like it now. It’s more like what I originally intended. I’m planning on spending half of next month polishing it up. This is about a movie star who crashes into the life of a Hollywood-hating, reclusive lighthouse keeper.

LGBTQ/Historical romance. A soul-deep passion project for me, a m/m book set in midcentury modern Palm Springs. Again, this one’s halfway done. The other half of next month is set aside to finish it.

Interim passion project to fill up the corners. This is the LGBTQ book that came to me fully plotted in the shower. That’s my reward for when I finish my writing goal for the day. This one’s m/m too.

That looks like a lot, but really, I’m focusing on one book at a time. And I have periods set aside to work on the three books that are the most done. Plus, a reward for finishing what I need to do.

That soothes anxiety.

But other projects lurk in the background calling to me. I have another m/m book I’m totally excited about and have written half of it. I’ll finish it after the above. I have a series of four contemporary romance books (starting with a single dad country singer) started. Oh, and a branch into Viking books and some nonfiction.

So, no wonder I’m feeling overwhelmed by attending RWA. I look at all these ideas and think, Christ, I already have my long and developed list of projects to work on that make me happy.

But I can face the inspiration I’m getting all weekend by taking notes, being patient with what I’m already doing, and trust that it all will work out.

I wish you your own inspiration. And patience. And fun.