PJL's Write Life

I'm not sure how December crept up on me so quickly. I swear yesterday was October and I was prepping for the November Christmas craft shows. Yet here we are. This month tends to be quiet as many people are busy with holiday activities. I have my fair share of activities as well, but I wanted to pop in and end the year with a big thank you. Thank you to everyone who helped me and hubby out this year. Thank you for every word of support and encouragement. Thank you for all the prayers and good vibes. It's been a trying year, but a strong support group makes it easier to bear. I really hope I can come here soon with good job news from hubby, but for now, it's one day at a time. Thank you again for everything. See you next year.  Today's post was part of the Insecure Writer's Support Group .  Created by the ninja captain, Alex J. Cavanaugh, it's a group for writers struggling with writing insecurity (AKA all of us) to gather and discuss their fears or to celebrat...

Today I decided to crowdsource some ideas. With it now being over a year of hubby job hunting, you can imagine he's racked up the rejections. For writers, it's no big deal. If you can't deal with rejection then you don't get into writing. It's expected to happen. It happens more often than not. But for a regular job seeker? That's a different story. The hope and goal is to get a job and get it quickly. Rejections happen, but not on the scale of writing. It can be soul crushing and hard to over come. Hubby has been struggling with it the stack he's gotten. I've done my to help him out and talk to him about how I deal with it, but I thought why not pose it to everyone at IWSG. Between us all, I can't imagine how many rejection letters have accumulated! What is your methods for dealing with lots of rejection? How do you get back up and get on the horse after being hit with a slew of rejections? What pep talks do you give yourself? I look forward to your...

Well, I am pleased to say that after last month's post I have written more. After that initial story, I had a nice 3 days streak of micro-fiction writing. Then I got too tired and didn't write much more. Then I got a second job at Sault Historic Sites as a cashier at 1 of 3 museums that meant a 6 day work week. I was certain that meant no writing was going to happen for a bit then. But this new second job is different than other jobs I've had. It's the first time I've had a job where I didn't spend the entire shift running around like a chicken with my head cut off. In the past, I've mostly worked restaurants as a line cook. If you've held those sorts of jobs, you know there is not much downtime and if there is, well, you're boss probably said, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean." Meaning if you weren't serving customers, you were cleaning some part of the restaurant. Breaks were often cut short because of orders. Restaur...

Last month , I talked about the energy my brain requires to write and how the majority of mine has been channeled into finding ways to make ends meet and get the bills paid. I was getting to the point where I was starting to get curious just how long I'd go without writing some fiction. Because my brain can be a jerk like that. I once signed up for Nano only to have my brain decide I shouldn't write a single word out of pure spite for Nano. I can fully see my brain deciding to see how long it can keep the no writing streak going just for the lolz. Then I did a little interview with a fellow writer over on Substack, Natalie Philips , and would you look at that. A little creative spark flew to live in my noggin' and I opened a WIP and wrote a little 200-word story. It may not be much, but after a 3 month dry spell, it feels like I just climbed a mountain. It feels amazing. Despite life being lifey (coming up on 1 year since hubby got fired) I still have the words hidden insid...

I almost didn't have a post for this month. If you recall last month , I said life was lifey and with hubby's continued lack of job, writing had taken a back seat in my life. I haven't written anything outside of some newsletter posts, but the night before IWSG, I had something to talk about so here I am. And that's how I don't really see much discussion on how writing takes energy. In the writing community, we like to joke, "Butt in chair and write." I often feel like its said in a way that implies that because you are sitting down to write, you are not exerting energy. That couldn't be farthest from the truth. At least not for me. The main reason my writing has ground to a halt is because I don't have the spare brain power for fiction. All my noggin energy is going to figuring out how to get the bills paid for the month. We are now at the point where we have to start drawing from savings. I don't work enough at Salvation Army to cover even ha...

I had a completely different post written for June about how May went for me. (Spoiler, there was no fiction writing and little other writing. Life was lifey.) Then I watched this video from Becca Syme and her words really resonated with me. I have definitely been missing a lot of joy when it comes to writing. My assumption was it was because of my two day jobs. If I combine both, I am pulling 10 hour work days and on my feet for both with one having a lot of people interaction and running around. I routinely get over 8,000 steps in at Salvation Army. By the end of it, I am out of gas and I fall asleep on the couch after dinner. But then Becca started talking about life's stakes and how those can derail the best writing plans. I realized, I was living in a very high stakes moment.   Hubby is still job hunting. His unemployment is long gone. We've just about used up the money from our tax refund. What we have in savings is going to start draining because I don't work enough ...

The other day on Substack, a post was going around of someone who had complied their list of top fiction writers. It was a solid list with lots of good writers. And I wasn't on it. Which stung, but also, my newsletter isn't solely fiction so I can't say I was that surprised. But I did feel pretty cruddy for a bit. Luckily, I did the smart thing and left the computer. Hubby and I went for a walk. We went down to the pet store and checked out the animals. Then we wandered into Goodwill and I ran into a coworker and others I knew. It made me feel better. It also reminded me of a moment when I was in college. I was an art major and the walls were often papered with student projects. Some might have looked and felt motivated, but I had the complete opposite reaction. I felt so demotivated by the displays. I wasn't good enough to be picked. And the thing is, even back then, I knew that was irrational. Art is something you practice and get better at. I also knew I didn't n...