Feeling Naked?

#dallas, #exposing, author, book, exposing dallas, miss, naked, projects, Random, writing
Lose your cell phone? Maybe forgot your watch? Maybe you showed up for work without your earrings. Worse, forgot your wallet AND your lunch.

We’ve all been there, had to go without something all day, and because of that, we felt naked. Naked without your wedding rings, or maybe, you just wore a shirt that makes you feel naked because it requires constant ‘adjustment’.

Well, I am feeling naked right now. Not because I have forgotten something (and I hope I don’t forget anything on my jaunt to meet a friend for lunch today) but because I have not written or edited in days.

Bad, bad author. Bad writer. Yes, I know.

While my third book, Exposing Dallas, is being reviewed by my editor, I had begun the sequel to ED. I wrote about 40 pages in three or four days. When I want to write, I can write, boy. But I’ve been in a funk where I feel like I don’t want to bother writing the sequel (or even editing Exposing Dallas with the first 1/3 of the book’s notes) until I know whether or not she likes the book. I know I can’t base my book’s success on one person’s critique, but it is also an important one. So I hold a lot of stock in it.

The worry has robbed me of my will to write this past week. This blog is about all I’ve done. At least it’s something, and heck, I have gone months without writing or editing before. But having two projects in the works and doing nothing for them is unlike me.

So, without my writing, without my insatiable need to create my fictional worlds into which I escape, I feel naked. I feel like I am missing an important part of myself right now. Yes, I have the important job of taking care of my daughter, the actual reason I am a stay at home mom now, but I miss writing through nap times.

I sure hope I get positive feedback so that this funk lifts. In the meantime I am trying to keep myself busy. Of course, keeping a blog, marketing two novels, following the blogs of others, operating a Facebook Fan Page, and many other things keep me busy. But they’re definitely not as fun as writing.

4 thoughts on “Feeling Naked?

  1. Believe me, I've felt this way many times. 🙂

    Don't worry about not writing the past little while. In actuality, the fact that you start and stop shows that you are a true writer.

  2. Thanks. I know we can't be perfect. And if I was writing, it would likely be subpar or reflect how I am feeling, not necessarily how the character is feeling…

    I wrote this in my book last week, and it kind of reflects my own feelings. Now please don't judge this as my final work. It is the first writing and has had no editing, lol!

    "When his band members had gone to bed, Dallas lied awake, wondering what would happen when he arrived home tomorrow. He had only been gone a week, but that was long enough. He hated to leave things unresolved, and his absence from his family just made the misery worse. It was the misery of waiting.

    He could compare it to the mental anguish one might feel when having a work of art judged. A song. A painting. A book. An artist poured so much love into their pieces—sometimes a lifetime’s worth of love—and waiting for the judgement, he knew from experience, was misery. Self-doubt ruled one’s body and mind. To think they may have wasted so much time, wasted love that they could have put into other tasks, other pieces of artwork, be it musical, written, or painted… Torture.

    This kind of waiting was just as bad because he feared the judgement, the inevitable rejection. He had played this waiting game five times since Ellie handed back her ring (his hand travelled back to it) and while he was away his heart was in no task, not even that of surviving. It was in her hands, pumping, squirming, withering. Neither of the times that he had returned with some modicum of hope did he receive the answer he desired, the yes, let’s give it another try. It was like knowing that no matter how many times you played your song on the radio, the music fans of the world were never ever going to like it. The song was shit."

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