Thought for the Day

I came up with this yesterday at Janet's community/blog:

A WIP shouldn't be IP forever.

Image: Wikimedia

Be a 'Vert - We Need More 'Verts!

Talking with Cute Shoes recently, she was dreading some upcoming events and saying "I am such an introvert."

Knowing what a charming and successful woman CS is, and having been friends with her now for a few years, I was drawn up short at the assertion she is an introvert; I know few people who can better handle others, and I know too how confident she is in managing them when it is called for. But, thinking about it, I understood what she meant.

It's a bit like me and math. I was good at it as a student (current status - unknown), but good lordy did I hate it.

Social situations can be the same.

And, as much as some people who know me - and don't - will smirk at the idea, I am a default introvert myself.

Put me in a situation with people, I do well; I trained at the knee of my mother, a woman with the most remarkable *memory* for other people's lives I have ever seen, but also open and eager and extremely interested in making connections with others. And yet - at bottom, my mom is not actually confident. She is at times not unlike the nervous little girl I remember being; standing before the door of a friend's house, wanting them to come out and play, yet finding the doorbell suddenly overwhelming.

But take away other people, give me no daily schedule of discipline - office, errands, and so forth - and I'd scarcely ever leave my house.

My default operational status is "Sit. Stay." I quite love people. I even enjoy being sociable.

But, given no specific motivation to be among them? I will not be. I'll be home with Penelope and Gossamer.

Being "on" with others can be strangely physically exhausting. I come home from the Conference most years with a migraine, and a major area of stress for me with The Big Meeting recently was the need to be in the front of the room so much, even if I wasn't a speaker. To work with the hotel, to field questions and issues, to confer with executives on issues and practicalities.

Extroversion is exciting, it's rewarding. It can be fun, it can be surprising.

It's invariably exhausting, for some of us.



I'm not sure whether I can identify where on the spectrum of INTROVERT <---------------------> EXTROVERT I actually lie. Perhaps it varies; a sine wave of energy versus hermit-ly resting.

Are you more one than the other? Are you both, depending upon circumstances? Or are you both, but sometimes circumstances don't quite match your level of social energy as you wish it would ... ?

Words Not for the Counting

It's hard not to see from my last several posts - and, for that matter, their lack of blathering content - that The Ax and the Vase, and my writing as a thing itself, took a turn for the productive in recent weeks.  Periods of creativity (and motivation of all kinds) ebb and flow, come and go, but I would be disingenuous not to notice that this period seems to have come upon me just as I shed one job for another.

I'm a bit old for girlish crushes on new jobs (not that I don't do that anyway - shoot, my crush on my last job lasted nearly two and a half years).  The new one hasn't got me scheming with myself to get all my friends to come work there, nor gushing constantly to everyone how gorgeous and what a great cook it is - but, I do have to say, when the BOSS came to my cube today and smilingly said, "Is this week over yet?" I did get a warm fuzzy.  Heh.  And, completely with no-harm/no foul, it's not beyond anyone's comprehension that a job and an employee no longer being a good match is exclusively and unilaterally measured by an employER's satisfaction.  I loved my team so much - but my job itself changed in ways I wasn't coping with.  It happens.

The thing is, I don't actually chalk this new period of productivity up to leaving my old gig.  Two of the greatest stressors in my life, which have not one thing to do with any job, have not gone anywhere.  My work schedule changed, so my sleep patterns and free time throughout the week are on different rhythms - that's got nothing to do with the jobs themselves, it's just a matter of time itself.  The weather's different, the year is all new, the holidays are over.  The surge in my creativity could come from any number of sources, including that one butterfly across the world who beat her wings that one time eight years ago.  Life just acts like that, it's a smarty pants business.  That's why I like it.

The best part of finishing the revision night before last - and taking one day off - is that I've already sent out two queries tonight, and the NEXT novel has already been much on my mind.  As backburnered as that idea has been for years now, it's gratifying to feel energy in that direction.

To be perfectly frank, between stress and the amount of time it's taken me to complete (and complete and complete) The Ax and the Vase, I wouldn't have sworn confidently I had another novel in me.  But now, not only am I excited to get back to early-stage writing work again, I've learned enough that I do feel confident the next work won't take so long.

And I've stuck out this process through all this time.  I have seen this thing through - and will keep on doing so, and producing more.

My confidence in Ax--in Clovis, really--has always been unwavering.  I've learned the degree to which that was ill-advised, in those first years when I believed all that nonsense about editing and revision applied to OTHER people (I may be Diane Thoughtkiller, but from where I sit now the unrealistic precious-baby-ness of my earlier expectations is clear enough; fortunately, I only needed to learn ... not quite be "lessoned" ...).  I've also learned the degree to which my confidence is an asset, and it's the one asset as an author I've never found wanting.  I will do all I can for Ax, and for the WIP, and for that one idea for Novel #3 that never has disappeared either.

Whatever day job I have - and whatever its stressors or distractions or benefits:  I will always be an author.  Published or not, nobody can deny it.  And, soon, a whole lot more than just you guys reading here will know about it, too.