Where do you go when you are out of options?
One step back. Reconsider your options.
Rinse and repeat. Aha, therein lies the answer. It’s like knitting. You often have to unravel back to the dropped or twisted stitch.
I’ve been writing for years — everything from PLR to letters to plays and novels. I love writing. I’ve written millions of words. But — each year, I had to reinvent the wheel. When I saw my writing bogged down, I did not mean I had writers’ block. I mean my writing just keeps on plugging on and it builds no momentum and rouses no followers. The writing itself is fine, or at least good enough, but I kept inadequate records, and badly filed my stories.
I’ve taught writing. I’ve written novels. The novels linger, all three of them, unedited and unsold. Not that they were rejected, they were never submitted. I kept meaning to get around to the editing process, research the market, find a publisher. But meanwhile another bill would come due and I’d turn to something immediate to make the bucks to pay that bill and this would keep happening and happening.
Yes, I write. Yes, I have a very long writing resume. But there is no pattern. No growth. Each time I sit down to write anything, it is a fresh start. This piece of writing is not connected to any previous piece of writing. If I just wanted to keep on writing this would be acceptable. After all, I do like writing a great deal. However, if I wanted to make a good living at writing, I needed more.
I needed a plan.
A goal.
Anything. So I opened the closet where I keep my stationery. Hahahaha. One might expect a box of pens and a couple of notepads. Maybe some printer paper. I have stacks of notebooks – spiral bound, hardcover, small, medium, regular, jumbo. Stacks. I picked up a notebook at random and it contained a 1991 outline for a great novel I never wrote.
And what was worse — I do most of my writing on the computer. So what is with all this paper?
Confession Time
The complete irony of all this was that I had created an alternate job for myself as the Chaos Queen. People would hire me to declutter their homes. When I came to the internet and thought, well I can do something here in the information world.
Dither. Dither and dither some more. What to do. Sometime I’ll tell you more about some of the decisions I made.
Nothing is lost and in the whole experience I learned an awful lot about so many things. And then it came to me — what if the Chaos Queen organized my writing life. So I separated the two halves of my being and since my birthday in April, the Chaos Queen has been running my life. And my writing.
Follow this blog if you too are having difficulty growing a writing business. Remember just because you love writing doesn’t mean you can’t make a lot of cash at it.
