Your ability to share deeply in your lj - speaks volumes about your ability to tell stories. You tell us wonderful stories everytime you post. Even if it is just your watermelon's being smashed - or - the fact that you need to work full time again. I consider the line between fiction and real life to be moot if you are a writer. Stories only work if their inner logic carries some conviction - some truth - no matter how mundane or outrageous the tale is. In fact - I would say that you don't know how to communicate without story. I don't think I do either.
I am also struggling with depression. I have a huge unmanageable manuscript for my first novel. And I have to keep going. Even when I feel like I can't. And I don't have any published novels - any signs that I'll ever be published. I was rejected by the seven of the best MFA programs last year. I'm waiting to hear from Bennington now. And I have four more schools selected to apply to if I am rejected from there. Everything feels scary and bleak right now. I feel like I have no future. I feel hopeless. But I'm not going to sit down here and wait for the grey emptiness to consume me. I watched my mother flounder. I watched her die when I was twenty. even when I feel I am not making progress and the depression makes me want to lie down and sleep forver - I won't. (I let the depression put me out of commission for two years - because I didn't understand. And my only lifeline then was HP.)
And the small snippets of your new novel are enticing. Maybe your male characters are shadowy and elusive on purpose? Maybe they fear intimacy? Especially the strong and frozen intimacy Solveig would demand... (just guessing here)
Anyway - I know you still have stories. You are telling one now. And I don't think you'd be breathing if you didn't have any more to tell. I wish I had some old war story for you about how I felt that way with my novel - and I solved it. But I don't. I'm still mucking about here in the trenches. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, and I'm okay as long as I don't dwell on the fact that I don't know what I'm doing. Then I paralyze myself. But cheese or a cocktail or even writing fanfic helps that.
Last year I pushed the whole story out in odd pieces. Now - I'm rewritting. Its hard - and sometimes it isn't fun. But I make progress - slowly. Sometimes is easier to just write fanfiction. But I always have to come back to the novel. Clio will not let me sleep at night otherwise.
no subject
Your ability to share deeply in your lj - speaks volumes about your ability to tell stories. You tell us wonderful stories everytime you post. Even if it is just your watermelon's being smashed - or - the fact that you need to work full time again. I consider the line between fiction and real life to be moot if you are a writer. Stories only work if their inner logic carries some conviction - some truth - no matter how mundane or outrageous the tale is. In fact - I would say that you don't know how to communicate without story. I don't think I do either.
I am also struggling with depression. I have a huge unmanageable manuscript for my first novel. And I have to keep going. Even when I feel like I can't. And I don't have any published novels - any signs that I'll ever be published. I was rejected by the seven of the best MFA programs last year. I'm waiting to hear from Bennington now. And I have four more schools selected to apply to if I am rejected from there. Everything feels scary and bleak right now. I feel like I have no future. I feel hopeless. But I'm not going to sit down here and wait for the grey emptiness to consume me. I watched my mother flounder. I watched her die when I was twenty. even when I feel I am not making progress and the depression makes me want to lie down and sleep forver - I won't. (I let the depression put me out of commission for two years - because I didn't understand. And my only lifeline then was HP.)
And the small snippets of your new novel are enticing. Maybe your male characters are shadowy and elusive on purpose? Maybe they fear intimacy? Especially the strong and frozen intimacy Solveig would demand... (just guessing here)
Anyway - I know you still have stories. You are telling one now. And I don't think you'd be breathing if you didn't have any more to tell. I wish I had some old war story for you about how I felt that way with my novel - and I solved it. But I don't. I'm still mucking about here in the trenches. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, and I'm okay as long as I don't dwell on the fact that I don't know what I'm doing. Then I paralyze myself. But cheese or a cocktail or even writing fanfic helps that.
Last year I pushed the whole story out in odd pieces. Now - I'm rewritting. Its hard - and sometimes it isn't fun. But I make progress - slowly. Sometimes is easier to just write fanfiction. But I always have to come back to the novel. Clio will not let me sleep at night otherwise.
Much love and admiration,
Katie