“everything’s gonna come around / shout out someone will listen to you to me / someone’s gonna see”

[larryhammer]

It’s been an odd year for me, writing-wise.

Under my wallet name, I translated two long poems and a handful of shorts, and polished and posted a longer original poem, part of a series. I have in queue a couple more original poems to finish polishing and posting (including a Chaucerian AU of Ovid). I also revised and polished three stories, of which posted one, sent the second on submission, and … um, lost track of the third. Should be ready for submission, I think. Also lost track of: finishing publication of a collection of translations, previously created as a single-copy presentation edition given to my mother.

Under a handle not connected to my wallet name, I revised and posted three novels of erotica and a couple shorts, and just finished a draft of another novel, a sequel.

No new poetry, except for two in-character poems in the novel, and no new fanfic. And no progress on rewriting the YA novel on deck, but that’s situation normal since parenthood.

Whether feeling deeply unsettled is symptom or (partial) cause of all this, I cannot tell. Regardless, an odd year.

---L.

Subject quote from It’s Gonna Get Better, Genesis.

Comments

[sartorias]

Wow, that's an impressive bunch of work!

[graydon]

That sounds like a lot, especially during the end of an age.

My take on unsettled is that it's amorphous and general this year, for anyone paying attention.

[larryhammer]

Definitely general as well, but whether the ambient unsettled more contributed to or compounded with my writerly feyness, I cannot judge.

[larryhammer]

On the one hand, it feels good to be back to prose, even if done purely for personal enjoyment. On the other, where did my translation brain wander off to? My Chinese brain? And why such the focus on clearing out my trunk?

[graydon]

Do you need to know?

I have been trying to avoid unscrewing the inscrutable and finding it helps, some. The dread is permitted to be amorphous.

[larryhammer]

Nope, and since for the nonce it is not significantly impeding being functional, at least in most spheres of my life, I haven't been pushing.

[thawrecka]

That seems like you did a lot! It was a very odd year, yes, and I think we're all having trouble judging how successful we were at everything we tried.

[asakiyume]

Three novels and a couple of shorts! Wow! Having multiple writing personas seems good for productivity? No, that's probably not the lesson to take from this. But how cool--congratulations. ... And I get from your final sentence that the whole situation isn't bringing you pleasure, and I don't mean to disregard your feelings in saying congratulations. What you've done just seems like an accomplishment worth celebrating--that's all. But at the same time, this is a terrible time; life is very hard; one feels rage and grief and fear and sometimes joy too, but an awful lot of the first three... so the unsettled feeling seems just... very real, I guess.

[larryhammer]

Surprisingly lot. Despite all the loose ends I keep noticing.

[larryhammer]

Well, revised three existing novels, and wrote from scratch another plus a short story.

But contra your reading of the last sentence, it does bring joy, quite a bit. But I’m also disconcerted. And celebratory.

[batwrangler]

That sound like a lot! In an especially difficult year. Remember to breathe and to give yourself time to recharge.

[thistleingrey]

That's quite a bit! I am (as expected) intrigued by "Chaucerian AU of Ovid."

[thistleingrey]

It would be deeply weird to me if the translation/language parts and the generative writing parts were mutually exclusive in your brain. More writing of prose/story -> less linguistic bridging per se makes perfect sense to me, IOW, FWIW.

[asakiyume]

Excellent about the joy! A little disconcertment is okay. The celebration is good. And don't worry; you'll write poetry again too, I'm sure.

[larryhammer]

I've had periods, though, of doing extended original writing and translation at the same time -- such as that poem-a-day project while also managing a classical Japanese poem every other day or so.

A big part of it is I've only so many creative spoons a day. But also, different processors go on- and offline in patterns I cannot discern.

[larryhammer]

Right now, writing is the recharging.

[larryhammer]

Heh. I'll bump its priority up a little.

ETA: And, posted.

[thistleingrey]

*nods* and at times I think it's the relative intensity of thinking through something, versus having done some of that work earlier such that the output part seems momentarily easier. If you figure out the pattern of online/offline, bottle it and write one of those howto guides to finance what you want most to do. :)

[larryhammer]

Ha ha ha ...

[thistleingrey]

Thanks for letting me know! Now open in a tab.