What To Do When There's Nothing To Do

Anxiety, writing, and Tim Robinson Memes

Things you know about me: I am an author who has self-published the majority of my work over the course of 15 years. I’ve gotten very used to the idea that my work is on my own time, my own schedule. I’ve been in control of when every aspect of the book release happens: editing, interior formatting, cover reveals, review copies going out, book launches, signings, etc. I’ve curated what feels like the right amount of time based on the project for all of these things to coalesce and work together.

Impatience has gotten the better of me many times over. That, and the idea that if I don’t have something to announce or something that my hands are deep in, that I’m not being productive, that I’m watching the heartbeat of my writing career slow to no pulse through the jagged Y-incision I keep opening up.

I’ve been dealing with that familiar anxiety over the last several months over various projects since I’ve decided to branch out from my just self-publishing phase. I’ve been finding it very hard to allow myself to enjoy the process of writing something new because I JUST CAN’T LET GO. I do love writing new things, I really do. However, I’ve also become paralyzed by the idea of holding onto characters that I don’t feel I’ve finished things with yet. Probably because I don’t think I’ve finished figuring out myself and all of us, regardless of whether we want to or not, end up putting pieces (however minute) of ourselves into our characters.

And because we become so attached to our stories, we want to cling to them. We start to wonder of that publisher will like our work. If the magazine editor will like our brand of strange storytelling. If an editor has any questions about a choice we made in the story. Should we get in touch and ask? Should we tell them?

NO, BY THE WAY. NO.

But, the attachment to characters lingers… Perhaps against better judgement, I’m working on a sequel to something that I’m shopping around right now with the understanding that if the first one does get picked up, a sequel may very much not be what said publisher is looking for. Even if it is my grief/existential version of Megashark vs. Crocosaurus.

But sad. And in New England.

Writing something that you know very well won’t get published is as calming as it is nerve-wracking. Knowing that this thing is going to sit on my computer unread by any eyes other than my own (presumably) allows for this really weird freedom that I haven’t felt in a long time. I put a lot of my weirdness into my books already. Unabashedly. People know I like sad stuff. They know I like to put my characters through the wringer. They know I’ve got a flare for the melodramatic at times.

But knowing that we’re at some The Asylum level goofy allows for a kind of authenticity to come out that I haven’t written in a long time. I’m talking about the influence of all of those goofy Syfy original movies I watched as a kid, about the 80’s and 90’s oddball films and tv shows that most definitely traumatized/fascinated me.

Return to Oz: Why didn’t the Gnome King take over Oz sooner if he was able to turn everyone to stone with a snap of his fingers? Who knows, but we get to see a dystopian Oz with terrifying clown people with wheels for hands and feet and an evil witch who steals heads and wears them like the latest fashion.

WTF is up with the Neverending Story (both the first and the second) and their obsession with people having more than one face?! Tri-Face, who was in maybe two scenes of the second movie is like a horrible science experiment. Someone tossed a six-sixed die and an academic into Jeff Goldblum’s The Fly transformation chamber and out popped this calculated nightmare who made a machine that steals memories based on wishes made towards an ouroboros necklace. Does it make sense? Hell no. Did I gobble it up like candy? Hell yes.

So, exciting to let all the inhibitions go and also, scary. That’s the problem with having an anxiety disorder. You always, always, always question yourself. You always have that little niggling feeling in the back of your brain that asks “Well, what if someone does want to publish a sequel? You can’t make it too wacky.”

And then I question decisions I’m making in the story. Where I’m making characters go. Why I’m making them do the things they do. I’m reining it in. And it becomes less fun somehow.

And in order to avoid that less fun, I start fixating on the stuff I’ve already written, the stuff that’s in someone else’s hands, in someone else’s control and that’s a dangerous place to be, friends. Especially if you’ve got a background like mine. Worrying about things you can’t control is stupid. This shit gets exhausting.

You always want to have a pulse on where your projects are at with a publisher. If you haven’t got an agent to look out for you, you have to be more so. After all, these are characters and stories you’ve put yourself into and they are things you care about. But you also have to remember that, at a certain point, there’s only so much you can do. And if you act like an obnoxious gnat fluttering around your own head questioning things that aren’t within your capacity to control, your mental health takes a beating.

Pretty soon, you’re thinking: what if they don’t like it? What haven’t they responded? They must not like it.

Go easy on yourself. You’re not the Driving Crooner.

I’m writing this blog as much for me as I am for the next person who is going out of their mind: stop fixating and have fun. Stop doing this to yourself. Life is short and there are millions of stories to tell. And you’ve probably got three or four ideas bursting at the seams of your brain, keeping that heart beating with the desire to tell them. People are busy and they’re not all out to get you.

Sloppy steaks aside, put your phone in a different room for a few hours while you make magic on the page. Or, if you can’t do that, put it on “do not disturb”. I’ve got a timed feature on my phone that lets me use apps for certain amounts every day that I really should use more. You probably have it, too. Leap into the weird horse-drawn woodland carriage with sexy glitter sorceress and her giant chicken henchman for a while and get lost.

Now that I’m done writing this, I’m going to do that for a little while.

There’s always something else you can do besides let anxiety get the better of you. When in doubt, create.

-Kat