Progress is difficult to describe without definable objectives and specific goals having been stated at the start. Activities that seem to produce no actual product can be written off as ‘busy work’ or pointless – even mindless – possibly mindful – ways of passing the time when not otherwise contributing to the economy at large or domestically, essential or not.
I have been struggling with Depression and Anxiety – the reasons include the stretching of my writing goals and dreams over time like an elastic band stretched to the limit and left to weather till it perishes and lets go. I haven’t quite let go but I am fragmented in my objectives.
Other reasons are undoubtedly the Pandemic’s wide grip on all our lives and having a parent in the house who has Dementia and for whom I am sole Carer. Being alone at home here on the farm has never been a problem for me but being trapped by COVID, and the Social Care system, with someone whose reality is not mine is very hard and it comes loaded with more guilt than folk, who have never been called on to experience it, cannot possibly understand. I can only do my what I can do. I can only react as I do. I am human.
The goat project, which we hoped would give us some life about the place, and meaning to the farm again, has been tough the last few months, and at times downright unpleasant, especially following the shockingly sudden loss of one of my two ponies, Flax. The two situations have been hard to get through – the goats are out of sync with the best practice for their breeding year. As a new herd are much more 20 individuals than a group of 20 which can be high stress and unhealthy for them as they settle in to life here. It is a strain it to call it fun going into the second year with many questions remaining unanswered.
Rufus’ life has also been changed by the loss of his half brother, and equine companion, and the expanding goat herd. He has been very brave and done his best to stand alone when he has always been boss of his own herd. He has accepted the goats, at a distance, as company and we have put him in an area in the middle of all our comings and goings, but it is not ideal. This has meant difficult conversations with friends and ‘well meaning folk’ who have all kinds of views and opinions, about how I should maintain Rufus for the rest of his life, in which they have failed to acknowledge en masse that I have owned Rufus since he was 4 months old. I was the first human to touch him – as I was Flax and Wolfe who arrived with him – and Rufus has been constant in my life for 16 years and I in his and I have never once acted in any way that could be construed to be not in his best interests and in a way where people, who shut the fuck up long enough, could fail to miss how important horses and ponies are to me and how much I care. Yes folks I care. I do not Compete but I support those who do. I do not hunt, or race, but I support those who do. I ride alone but I do not have a problem with those who hack about in groups. I have no problem with anyone who wants to have horses in their lives – they have been my life – however invisible that fact is to others who offer me unasked for, and inappropriate, advice – since I was a tot. I do not have all the answers for Rufus and I but we are working on it – together.
Rufus, the goats, my mum and I rock-on doing our best with circumstances that are beyond our control – and not part of our choices – on the whole we are doing pretty well and gotten through quite a rough patch. Like everyone else we all with COVID would sod off 🙂
The fall out of living with this stuff is that I had been concentrating on turning my quest series into Lucks Hill Riders aiming to get the second one rewritten, and off to an Editor, with the prequel lead magnet, and both out into the world. I was thinking of covers and marketing and VAT and Bank Accounts… This set of stories have been written over the last 15 years and I thought of them as contemporary – though in 15 years the number of wars on this planet is grim – one character’s father started in Afghanistan and I have not been struggling to keep him in a contemporary war zone ever since 🙁 I had decided to concentrate on this one series but then I lost it with the Pandemic – it is now not contemporary but dated to Pre Covid and instead of gently keeping it relevant and alive to now it has become set ‘back then’. Right now I don’t have an answer for that.
The series is about farming and riding and those two areas are changing rapidly too – enough to make me seriously doubt my concept is still relevant, let alone contemporary. It is ‘dated’ not only by COVID but also by BREXIT – both just turn me off.
Rather than beat myself up over any of this I have continued recording the non-fiction project – around the first year back in home dairy goat keeping. Have now passed that milestone and am into Year Two. I am looking at the material I have for Year 1 and processing the experiences. Referencing my last post I have been using Scrivener 3 too 🙂
I have also been studying, researching and reading for the paranormal and fantasy/time-travel fiction story ideas I had lower down the Fiction To-Do list. And some new ideas in those genre and new thoughts on my old adult series. This gets me right away from being ‘contemporary’ and any current politics, pandemics and policy trends that colour work that will be ‘behind the times’ before it leaves Scrivener 3. I am giving myself time to adapt.
I enrolled in Master Class and have enjoyed several of those and been watching a quaint TV show Haven, which I thought was lame till I realised it was based on the Stephen King story – then I found it a fantastic learning tool for non-alien fantasy /horror story ideas and plots – which resolutions worked and which didn’t on the ‘believability’ scale etc. I am at the plot card stage with my new story now.
Yes, it is slow going – no I am nowhere near publishing anything other than this Blog – which no one reads – yes I am fully capable of making myself incapable of any sensible action with depression and frustration, and sleepless nights, over this lack of social proof, tangible products – income – but I keep going. I record what I have done every day and Rescue Time records that exactly on all my devices and when I look back at the stats and notes there are no days or weeks I don’t push forward, fall back and regroup and push forward again or flex and change tactics or reappraise my strategy. I listen to Jo Penn and Orna Ross and I keep in touch with Holly Lisle – I check out courses I bought back then when the ‘belief’ was strong that this would be a short flight to the land of Publication and Author status and then I set back down for the long haul.
I don’t know where this will end but that won’t stop me pushing on in the face of that fact. I wrote, some while ago, I felt like I had gotten off the train and was sitting on the platform watching it leave – the Indie ‘writing world’ was too frenetic and I had doubts about the business model. That phase is over. Time is still the enemy of any endeavour that has definition in that way – otherwise, it is the life you lead at the time – like farming – and mine is a writing life on this farm where there are times and seasons for all things and the time comes around to act when the conditions allow. What you reap depends on ground preparation, sowing and on the growing conditions the crop requires – but farming is not the only way of life – one can hunt and gather to survive and let go of the roots we put down.
Lots of metaphors in there and lots of thoughts but I am still here making up stories, and working out how to get them onto the page and into the hands of others, which means I am hunting these new stories and gathering ways to go forward.