Summer and Autumn Sampler by Karen Wiesner

 

Summer and Autumn Sampler

by Karen Wiesner 

Happy Fall! In honor of another summer gone past and the beautiful Fall leaves, I'm posting some of the newest, nature artwork I've been doing with initial pencil sketches followed by my colored pencil versions of them. 

Note, all of these are copyrighted by the artist (Karen Wiesner), illegal to download and distribute, and not available for reproduction or use for any purposes. 

Calla Lily Sketch @by Karen Wiesner

Calla Lily Rendered in Colored Pencils @by Karen Wiesner

 

Rosebud Sketch @by Karen Wiesner

  

Rosebud Rendered in Colored Pencils @by Karen Wiesner 

  

Fall Leaves Sketch @by Karen Wiesner

  

Autumn Sampler Rendered in Colored Pencil @by Karen Wiesner

  

Be sure to check out my website and the blog there to remain in the loop of all I'm doing: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/. 

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

Reflections of Life, Part 5 by Karen S. Wiesner

Reflections of Life, Part 5

by Karen S. Wiesner

In looking back over the course of my life as an author who's looking forward to becoming an artist in retirement, I've learned to slow down and reflect on the past, savor the present, and look forward to the future. Interspersed through these ruminations, I'll include some of my own most apropos sketches.

In Part 4, I covered strategies I implemented to restructure my life to bring better balance. As of this writing (April 20, 2023), I can see the end of the road before me. At my current rate of output, it's conceivable that I can finish the last three books in my last two series within the next year. In learning each day to reflect on where I'm going and what it took to get me there, I can also see just how far I've come in learning and relearning how I approach life, how I complete tasks, and accomplish the things I want to do in my time remaining. Instead of starting each morning (after the obligatory shower and coffee that have always been my initial protocol) by jumping headfirst into a mile-long list of the constant and relentless daily checklist of projects awaiting me, I now have--even by ordinary human standards--a manageable amount of tasks to complete each day.

When I avoid crash and burn habits by starting each day with study, prayer, and reflection, I actually sleep better most nights as a result. This feat isn't something I could have handled in the past, when I carted around a semi-trailer sized head full of tasks that needed nose to the grindstone diligence in order to check off each day. The thought of leisurely getting to work after beginning a day with contemplative endeavors would have been pure torture for me back when I believed I needed to fill the limited number of hours I was given each day with ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

I won't lie to you. I have backslidden. I struggle whenever I see my daily "To Do" lists grow. Amidst embarrassment, amusement, frustration, bewilderment, and even shock that I didn't see it as it was happening, I'm directed and redirected and prodded gently back to the path where I can slow down, start each day off right with morning reflection that sets the tone for the day I have, and decides whether or not I sleep well.

The part that astonishes me almost more than any other about all this is that I've discovered I actually accomplish more these laidback days than when I'm scrambling to check things off my list, causing myself so much stress I lay awake most of the night with a brain that just won't shut off. Rinse and repeat in an endless, vicious, boneheaded cycle in which I'm returned by factory reset to where I started.

Karen Wiesner Sketch: Reading in Bed

Research has shown that there’s scientific benefit involved in practicing appreciation on a day by day basis. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, Rutgers University Psychology Professor Nancy Fagley Research has shown that there’s even scientific benefit involved in practicing appreciation on a day by day basis. In a study published in the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, Rutgers University Psychology Professor Nancy Fagley suggests that people focus on and value what they have, spend time outdoors, and. "...reflect on the positive aspects of our lives, value our friends and family, relish and savor the good times...”

I've also discovered that the faster my pace in life, the busier I am, the less I find myself enjoying any part of my life. Think about that word "enjoy". It implies taking pleasure in something, experiencing appreciation and satisfaction in things, and benefitting from the act of savoring and relishing as opposed to viewing the blur of my life as it goes speeding by, leaving me coughing or even run down in its passing dust. There are also strong connotations of reverence and veneration in the word "enjoy". Daily reflection has taught me that humans can only honor and respect the countless blessings that make up our lives by allowing the whole of our beings--physical, mental, and spiritual--to slow down to enjoy them.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Reflections of Life, Part 4 by Karen Wiesner

Reflections of Life, Part 4

by Karen S. Wiesner

In looking back over the course of my life as an author who's looking forward to becoming an artist in retirement, I've learned to slow down and reflect on the past, savor the present, and look forward to the future. Interspersed through these ruminations, I'll include some of my own most apropos sketches.

In Part 3, I went over what brought about the strong sense that I needed to slow down as well as a few of the initial strategies I implemented in my struggle for balance in my life. After I decided a critique partner was crucial for me, ticks were made in my progress toward what I could accomplish in my remaining time writing. I was now able to return to my "To Be" list. I began to realize I needed to rename it my "To Be or Not To Be" projects. This time, I took off the list the books I didn't feel I had enough material to complete, nor did I believe I could brainstorm and bring about more, certainly not enough to bother undertaking them. Thus, the graveyard of books I was burying expanded. I grieved. I slowly and surely worked on my final two series to complete, one book at a time (for the most part anyway).

Oddly, in this process, I was also beginning to heal. I saw my editor/publisher and author relationship improving. Mutual compromise and finding a new way to accommodate my editor's suggestions, picking my battles with her, went far, but I also needed to humble myself in ways I never would have attempted in the past. I would have jumped ship and struck out anew instead.

Karen Wiesner Sketch: Braided

The quality of my new work also surprised me. I began to feel my books were even stronger than they were in my heyday, though as I said, my editorial skills feel like they're in decline due to aging…or other reasons I'm not entirely sure I want to define.

At this point, just how very tired I'm becoming was brought home to me. All those years of balancing a hundred different projects at the same time over the course of a year had taken their toll. Inconceivable to me in the past, when I actually thought about what I would write on my death bed, I could now see a point in time when I would retire from writing…when I would do something else instead of writing. Even I'm stunned that all of this was actually cathartic for me. It needed to happen, and not just for my own well-being. I actually began to want it to happen, which wasn't something that "sat easy" with my family and friends, who seemed to see this as a kind of death sentence for me instead of the new life I viewed it as.

One last time, I went back over my "To Be or Not To Be" project list and buried a few more stories that I knew I didn't have it in me to finish. I had only two more series to finish, and even less requirements to resolve them, considering that a few of the titles in them both were cropped. As a concession to what could have been some great tales in their own right, I started incorporating some of the ideas from those lost stories into the remaining books in the series. 

Next week, I'll cover the progress I've made in restructuring my life to bring better balance.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/ 

Reflections of Life, Part 3 by Karen S. Wiesner

                                          

Reflections of  Life, Part 3

by Karen S. Wiesner

In looking back over the course of my life as an author who's looking forward to becoming an artist in retirement, I've learned to slow down and reflect on the past, savor the present, and look forward to the future. Interspersed through these ruminations, I'll include some of my own most apropos sketches.

In Part 2, I discussed what it took to bring about change in the crash and burn lifestyle that dominated most of my adult life. On a daily basis, I began to sense the gentle nudge that led to the restructuring and reallocating of my energy and ease in juggling multiple projects at once. However, I can't move forward with this reflective essay without adding that the years of COVID hell were strong contributors to what truly seemed like the mighty falling and the dwindling effectiveness of my previously relished Super Powers. Like many other authors who struggled to produce anything salable during those aghast (in this context, an odd but fitting word) years, I produced next to nothing until at last light again penetrated the emotional void of my blackest period of existence. I saw distinct changes in my writing, from the quantity I was capable of producing right on down to the quality of the material. Some of these changes were for the better, others most certainly for the worse.

Ultimately, I came to the point where the only way to cope with my drastically altered form was to say "It is what it is", and move forward the best way I could. I had to learn to accept the new me, which most days seemed like a weaker, pitifully lessened, shell of myself. What came next was the aftermath of battles fought and lessons learned.

Karen Wiesner Sketch: Innocence Light and Dark

I went through the projects I'd once upon a time fully anticipated completing during my lifetime and evaluated whether I would or even could complete them after all. I started with the ones I'd already faced issues with in attempting to outline. In the course of my career, I'd realized that if I could finish an outline for a story, I would be able to write the book to my satisfaction. The first step was to remove those uncertain projects from the "To Be" list. A huge chunk of wannabe books fell by the wayside in this endeavor. On the plus side, I was able to finish within the next year two of the four series I had left to complete.

I also started gathering backup against having to endure further revision nightmares. I wanted to ensure as far as I possibly could that the body of material I submitted to the publisher I intended to keep for the rest of my career was as solid and flawless as I could make it. Over the years before my crisis, I'd begun to forsake critique partners for two very distinct reasons. The first reason is practicality. Simply put, I wrote too much and too fast to ask any critique partner or even a whole team of them to do so much for me. I think a crew, each member taking on a full-time job with handling even just a few of my books at a time, would have been required through most of my career. I did have a variety of critique partners, most of the time more than one, all put on different projects, but eventually it became harder to find ones I really trusted and believed were equal to the task. (I apologize if that sounds conceited, but…yeah, being practical, that was the way things stood.)

My second reason for not having critique partners for every single project was exactly what you may have guessed from that last paragraph: I got big-headed enough to assume in those later years before my crisis that I didn't need any helping making the majority of my books better and stronger. I thought I could do it completely on my own. Live and learn, but I have now found one single reliable critique partner that I'd worked with on and off in the past. I trusted her implicitly then, and even more so now that I find my once honed and sharp editorial skills becoming a bit more lax than even I'm comfortable with. Since my output has also been diminishing rapidly in these crisis years, I hoped I wouldn't overwhelm her with critique projects. I admit I definitely would have done that if not for the fact that the pipeline of my book releases has become hopelessly clogged during this time, stopping almost altogether in the course of the last five years as my only publisher has taken to renovating her entire backlist of books with new cover designs, fresh formatting, and updated promotion.

Next week I'll go over other strategies I implemented to restructure my life to bring better balance.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Reflections of Life, Part 2 by Karen S. Wiesner

Reflections of Life, Part 2

by Karen S. Wiesner

In looking back over the course of my life as an author who's looking forward to becoming an artist in retirement, I've learned to slow down and reflect on the past, savor the present, and look forward to the future. Interspersed through these ruminations, I'll include some of my own most apropos sketches.

In Part 1 of this article, I talked about feeling directed to find a better balance in my life. One of the first things required in order to bring about very necessary changes in my crash and burn lifestyle was the crushing of my ego. I've spoken before in my writings of the worst experience I've ever had with editing a project. Specifically, when I completed my Arrow of Time Chronicles (a massive science fiction saga) over the course of two intense years, I truly felt that I'd written my pièce de résistance. I believed it was the best thing I'd ever written up to that point. I was on top of the world. I couldn't wait to have my masterpiece published and in the hands of my readers. The editing process took place over the course of several months as all four books were released back to back.

As a little background to ensure full understanding before I continue, in the span of my writing career, I've written for at least 25 different publishers big and small, at first because it was the only way to get my horde of books out to the world as quickly as possible, considering how fast I wrote. Following a few years of the worst luck possible with some of my publishers who, frankly, "did me wrong", I decided to place all my books with a single publisher, the only one at that time I actually trusted, and still do. One after the other and sometimes in huge batches, I pulled my books from my other publishers, revised and reformatted each of them, and gave them to this one publisher, who, initially, reissued the majority of them very quickly, all while also publishing my brand new works.

From my very first book published in June 1997 to the one just before Arrow of Time Chronicles, the revisions handed down to me from any of my numerous editors had been mild up to this point, amounting to a few typos needing correction or sentences that required reworking for clarity with each book. With my first two writing reference books, editors wanted me to add certain sections, which meant drafting new material to coincide with a feature they wanted to see displayed in the manuals. All told, none of this was serious. Structurally, from the start of my career, all my books were solid and polished even before I submitted them. I possessed the editorial skills to make them so.

To this day, I'm not a hundred percent sure why this particular project caused such a rift between me and my publisher (who was also my editor for all my submissions). Even after the arduous, soul-tearing editing was completed, I still believed the four books in Arrow of Time Chronicles were some of my best to date. The agony I suffered through four excruciating times with each of the books in that series decimated me in ways I couldn't have previously imagined, given my editing history. I left the process limping and bleeding each time, my spirit ground to ash. My confidence took such a violent blow, I never wanted to write again because it meant inviting further attacks that would surely come during editing. While I couldn't and wouldn't do anything as drastic as quitting writing, all the spinoff books I'd planned to write in the Arrow of Time universe, once the four-book set was published, were summarily canceled. I couldn't take the risk that this series had been the cause of the damage that wreaked havoc between me and my publisher.

Karen Wiesner Sketch: Agony

As I said, I didn't quit writing altogether, but I did know I needed and wanted to make changes. In the span of my career, I've started 16 series, varying in length from three to twenty-three books in each. At that time, all but four of the series had been finished previous to this crisis. There was no way I could abandon those final four series without providing satisfactory resolutions. 

Over the next two years, I worked hard rebuilding my relationship with my editor, who was my only publisher now. While I can't take full blame for the problems between us, I know I did my share of harm. Chief among my issues was that my ego and (what seems like now) certainty that my every word was golden needed to be checked with humility and the willingness to compromise. These two lessons were hard fought battles for me, both internally and externally. In the process of learning them, I also undertook the heart-rending job of culling my list of upcoming projects.

Next week I'll talk about what brought about the strong sense that I needed to slow down.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Reflections of Life, Part 1 by Karen S. Wiesner

Reflections of Life, Part 1

by Karen S. Wiesner

In looking back over the course of my life as an author who's looking forward to becoming an artist in retirement, I've learned to slow down and reflect on the past, savor the present, and look forward to the future. Interspersed through these ruminations, I'll include some of my own most apropos sketches.

For the last several years, I've felt directed toward finding a better balance in my life. There's no denying I've spent most of my time on this earth cultivating a crash and burn lifestyle--in my work and "play" activities. Those who know me would agree that I can only be described as a person who gets things done (emphasis and attitude in that phrase, please). In all honestly, I took great pride in my accomplishments at many points in my life before I was laid low. You will see that--and even some smugness--reflected in these reminiscences. I apologize and ask for you to indulge me just this once, as this is something of a capsulation of my entire life, and I have little more to show for myself than these brief achievements. I'm forever reminded of the countless, plentiful desert periods in my life when I was absolutely certain I was a fraud without a speck of talent, natural or otherwise. Those by far supersede any glimpse of self-worth.

In any case, during my "leisure", I've been known to read in excess of 400 books in a single year. Yes, you read that right, and, yes, I know there are only 365 days in a year. In my work, which has been writing (professionally for the last 26 years) I've actually been compared to a computer. Only that accurately describes how quickly I process and perform my tasks. Whereas most writers can finish a novel or two a year and rare ones can produce one or two more than that, I've spent the majority of my career completing at least five full-length novels (ranging from 60,000 to 100,000 words plus) and five novellas (nearly all close to 40,000 words long) every single year.

If I had to be honest, I'd admit that I barely broke a sweat most of the time I was accomplishing these feats. In fact, reading and writing books was only part of what I was doing at any given time. Along with writing books, every year I made promotion of my published works a full-time job, along with leading a few writers' groups in which I coordinated numerous endeavors. I also wrote countless freelance assignments for many magazines, cranked out weekly or monthly columns for various publications, wrote blurbs, and critiqued and edited the material of other authors, as well as designed covers for my books and those of fellow authors.

Karen Wiesner Sketch: Still Life with Books

My secret: Early in my writing, I formulated an approach to writing that I've documented step by step in my reference titles. This technique allowed me to "work in stages" and accomplish so much more than I would have if I'd written each book from start to finish, back to back, one at a time. Essentially, I was always writing multiple books at a time, each in distinct stages of the writing process. For the most part, that technique ensured that I avoided burnout altogether. More accurately, I was able to sidestep it, provided I gave myself at least three vacations a year, each lasting 2-3 weeks long and forcing me to curtail all writing activities during them.

As long as I took those vacations as prescribed, I could indefinitely juggle the heavy workloads I assigned myself the rest of the year. Most often, I indulged in my favorite pastimes during my recuperation times: Reading and playing videogames. Here, too, I hit it hard. As befitting a crash and burn personality like mine, I would spend most of my waking hours, staying up late, playing a game or series of games or plowing through a shocking amount of books from my To Be Read mountain. This was the only way I was able to cope with the stress of just how much I was accomplishing in a year's time. Mind you, if I took my vacations when I needed to, for as much time as I needed to, I barely felt the weight of my work at all other times. In these 26 years, my running tally is 146 books published, 152 books written, and, incidentally, nearly 130 awards nominated for or won. This is the testament to my dedication in accomplishing all my writing goals.

As anyone can imagine, breaking this lifelong habit of crash and burn was nearly impossible. As I said at the start of this essay, I've felt myself being directed and redirected, gently, sometimes almost imperceptibly, for years. It wasn't a lesson I learned all at once, but it is one I had to relearn countless times it really stuck.  Many sentiments fit how it felt to be taught something I assumed I'd mastered only to fall back into the same bad habits that are seemingly my own unique factory resets: Embarrassment, amusement, frustration, bewilderment, even shock at my own ignorance and blindness as to what's happened to bring me back to square one.

It's unfortunate that, to get me to the point where I even agreed to submission in the first place, I had to be broken and re-broken. Strangely, I've come to enjoy (in some ways, at least) the slow-down--I, who once considered herself with no small amount of pride, the Mighty One with Super Powers.

Next week I'll talk about what it took to bring about change in the crash and burn lifestyle that dominated most of my adult life.

Karen Wiesner is an award-winning, multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.

Visit her website here: https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/

and https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/karens-quill-blog

Find out more about her books and see her art here: http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor

Visit her publisher here: https://www.writers-exchange.com/Karen-Wiesner/

Writers and Their Finances

In the April 2020 LOCUS, Kameron Hurley writes about the difficulties of maintaining a reliable income stream as a freelance author:

The Tricky Finances of the Adjunct Writer

Starting with the unusual problem of several thousand dollars popping up in her bank account from an unknown source, she muses on the balancing act a full-time writer who doesn't produce mega-bestsellers must perform to survive from month to month. She mentions such phenomena as different publishers paying at various intervals and on different dates, royalties received months or years after the publication that earned the income, payments that arrive long after the contract promised they would, and the difficulties of enforcing contracts when their terms aren't fulfilled. Not to mention the impact of that "boom-or-bust cycle" on income taxes. "Trying to explain how writers get paid to anyone outside of the business is difficult, because as you’re saying all this out loud, it sounds absolutely unsustainable and bizarre."

The "hustle," she says, "isn’t about balance. For many of us, the hustle is about survival." Hurley has a day job, which, as she emphasizes, most writers need not only for a reliable income stream but most importantly for health coverage. It was a slight shock to me when I read that half of her monthly Patreon support goes to cover her health insurance and mortgage. My reaction was, "Wow, she receives enough from Patreon every month to equal twice her mortgage and health insurance?!" And yet with that income and proceeds from sales and royalties, she's still struggling. Aside from the first full year after the release of my one Harlequin/Silhouette vampire romance, in my best years I generally earned enough from writing to buy a family dinner out once a month. Maybe twice, in good months.

Fortunately, all my adult life I've enjoyed the kind of support Hurley recommends at one point in her article—a well-employed spouse with excellent health-care coverage (from a thirty-year Navy career, followed by a secure retirement). We have never needed my writing income to live on. That's a good thing, because we would probably be sleeping in the car! Still, sales are gratifying even if one doesn't "need" them, because royalties equal readers, and writers create in order to be read.

Mercedes Lackey often points out that fewer than ten percent of writers make a living from their vocation, and most who do have a nonfiction income source (e.g., journalism, writing ad copy, editing, etc.) as a basis for financial security. Holding a day job doesn't constitute an admission of failure. She advises the aspiring novelist to get qualified in a field for which there's steady demand but which doesn't exhaust one's brain, thus supporting oneself while leaving time and energy for writing. Plumbing, for instance. Marion Zimmer Bradley was fond of reminding young writers, "Nobody told you not to be a plumber."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Writing in Times of Anxiety

Kameron Hurley's latest LOCUS column tackles the problem of writing through anxiety. The essay focuses mainly on public crises and disasters but mentions its application to personal troubles as well:

Writing Through the News Cycle

She quotes a common reaction: “It’s 2019. Who doesn’t have anxiety?” She also highlights what she sees as the difference between today's news-inspired worries and those of people in the 1950s and '60s faced with possible nuclear war: Nuclear holocaust was a hypothetical threat; such crises as wars in the Middle East and global climate change are already happening. "That makes optimism and hope a lot more difficult to cling to, and anxiety ratchets up the more one stays glued to the news." (A good reason, by the way, to resist the temptation to click on every Internet headline or obsessively pore over social media streams, a remedy Hurley herself alludes to.) She compares chronic anxiety to a "faulty fire alarm" (I'd say "smoke alarm," which is what she seems to be talking about), which keeps going off despite the absence of fire. Subjected to constant alerts, one suffers fear and anxiety even though, objectively, there's nothing more wrong at this moment than there was a minute, an hour, or a day ago.

One cognitive trick I try to remember to use on myself, by the way, is becoming mindful of the fact that very seldom is this present moment unbearably terrible. (It can be, of course—if one is in acute danger or severe pain, for example—but more often than not, it isn't.) Much of our unhappiness springs from brooding over unpleasant, scary, or outright horrible things that might happen in the future.

In response to the challenge of writing "through the tough times in life, personal as well as national, and, increasingly, global," Hurley says, "I’ve found that focusing on a better future, and putting that into my work, has helped me deal with the news cycle and the rampant anxiety." My own reaction as a writer to public disasters and personal troubles is pretty much the opposite. I don't feel capable of creating fiction with the weight needed to confront such crises. The problems of my characters seem to trivialize by contrast the real-world distress around us. Instead, I've turned to composing lighter pieces, stories featuring hints of humor and protagonists with believable but not dire problems (such as my recent novella "Yokai Magic," a contemporary light paranormal romance inspired by Japanese folklore) rather than backstories that abound in horrors and tragedies. Also, on a personal level, working on a story that I can hope will entertain readers as well as myself not only helps to distract me from whatever I'm worrying about but can cheer me with a sense of having accomplished something.

Some critics might label taking refuge from real-world problems in fiction, whether weighty or light, "escapism." Tolkien dealt with this charge many decades ago, asserting that such critics confuse "the escape of the prisoner" with the "flight of the deserter"? If we find ourselves in "prison," why should we be blamed for trying to get out? Hurley herself makes it clear that "this doesn’t mean closing one’s eyes to the horror." A fictional vision doesn't have to equate to "the flight of the deserter"; rather, according to her, "We are what we immerse ourselves in. We are the stories we tell ourselves."

Coincidentally, this week the local Annapolis newspaper, the CAPITAL, published a column by psychologist Scott Smith headlined, "How to stay happy in a world filled with sad events." He discusses how to deal with the modern condition of being "inundated with tragedy." He makes the very cogent point, "Our human brain is not really built to process this ongoing flow of tragic and negative events. We live with a brain that is tooled for a much slower pace...." Like Hurley's column, Smith's emphasizes the emotional and physiological stress caused by being constantly bombarded with negative images in the 24-hour news cycle. He mentions, in addition, "Our brain is also not very good at placing tragedy in context or calculating probability." When we hear about high-profile, terrifying, but extremely rare disasters, our brains are wired to react to these remote (for the vast majority of us) contingencies as if they were "imminent threats." Smith lists several suggestions of ways to reorient our thinking and appreciate the good things in our own lives, remedies that collectively boil down to "focusing on the positive and limiting our exposure to negative events that are out of our control." He would doubtless agree with Hurley that we, as writers, should resist allowing stress to drain our energies and instead cultivate the positive benefits of exercising our creativity.

I've probably quoted C. S. Lewis's refreshing perspective on global problems here before, but it's too relevant not to include now. This passage comes from his essay on living in an atomic age—demonstrating that news-related stress is far from a recent phenomenon:

"In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. "How are we to live in an atomic age?" I am tempted to reply: 'Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.' . . . .

"In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds."

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Work-Life Balance for Writers

Speaking of burnout (last week), coincidentally the current issue of RWR, the magazine of the Romance Writers of America, contains an article by multicultural romance author LaQuette, rebutting the assumption that "work and productivity is the only measure of success." It's titled "Passion, Productivity and Technology: Work-Life Balance." Since RWR articles can't be accessed by the general public, I'll list her points:

"Define your goals."

"Control your work; don't let it control you."

"Be honest" (with yourself about how much work you can realistically accomplish in a given time span).

"Maintain equilibrium in a healthy way" (by organizing your work schedule to leave time and energy for other things).

"Working lunches should not be a thing."

"Limit your access to work and work's access to you." (Self-explanatory in today's frenetic atmosphere of instant connection. Don't feel obligated to keep your phone on all the time or answer every e-mail the moment it arrives. Happily, that's a problem I don't have, because I don't own a smart phone. Just a dumb, basic flip phone, which I turn on only to make—rare—calls out.)

"Make time for the non-writing things you enjoy."

"Find a way to be social" (applies to introverts, too).

"Recognize and admit your issues; know it's okay to ask for help."

"Personal interests are important, too."

"Recognize the importance of goofing off."

As you may guess from these taglines, the author continually emphasizes, in a variety of terms, the importance of setting aside opportunities for relaxation, personal time, and fun. She summarizes, "All work and no play doesn't make LaQuette a dull girl; it makes her a snappy, disgruntled ogre...." I especially like the recommendation to goof off. I can do that!

That's goofing off in the context of a routine that also allows for a balance of work and other activities directed toward one's own personal goals, of course. However: "Let no one make you feel bad about taking your downtime seriously." The combination of "seriously" and "downtime" in the same sentence invites us to think hard about the apparent paradox.

I'm not sure I fully agree with LaQuette's broad statement, "Hard work to the point of mental, emotional, and physical collapse is what we're encouraged to do." It seems to me that our culture is beginning to repudiate that destructive mind-set. Otherwise, why would we see so many articles about work-life balance such as this one?

On a different topic, try to pick up a copy of the July issue of NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. In honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the first moon landing, the cover story focuses on space travel, past, present, and future, with lavish illustrations.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Writer's Burnout

Kameron Hurley's essay in the latest issue of LOCUS focuses on burnout. This isn't the same as "writer's block" (which some authors maintain doesn't actually exist, as there is always an identifiable reason for being "blocked").

The Singular Cure for Burnout

She discusses the "hustle culture," the need to work two or even three jobs to make financial ends meet. I must confess I'd never thought of freelancers as "working class folk," as Hurley classifies them in this article. In terms of income, though, a moment's thought makes it clear that the earning level of most freelance creators places them in the same income bracket as working-class employees—or lower. The typical writer's annual income, divided by hours worked, falls below minimum wage. Hence the "side hustle" that Hurley vividly describes. As she puts it, she couldn't afford to quit any of her day jobs because she was "hustling for health insurance."

Some of her comments strike me as chilling to contemplate:

"How are we monetizing our hobbies, our passions?" Isn't a "passion" something we pursue for the love of it?

"If you can’t carve out an hour in your day [to squeeze in writing between the day jobs], you must just not be working hard enough…." If many creators have to work nonstop like that, no wonder they tend to suffer burnout.

"I could have it all, it seemed. I just couldn’t remember much of it. I was too exhausted." Just reading that sentence makes me feel tired.

"I found that the only personal experiences of any note that I was mining for my writing happened in my twenties. All I could remember of my thirties was… working."

Upon googling remedies for burnout, Hurley discovered, "All the advice was the same: seek 'balance.' Meditate. Get enough sleep. Eat healthy." None of those sources recommended the "cure" mentioned in her title: "Do less." Her overall conclusion is, "Our culture worships busy-ness, but we, individually, don’t have to." Yet how does one do less and still pay for necessary expenses, not to mention the all-important health insurance?

The only time I came close to "burnout" was during graduate school, especially while working on the PhD. I wrote little or no fiction during the years of attending classes and producing my dissertation. Constant, high-volume academic writing left my brain too numb for imaginative creation. Throughout my adult life, I've been lucky to have what every author needs—a well-employed spouse with a secure career and high-quality health coverage (in our case, through the U.S. Navy). Unfortunately, not all writers are in that position (or, maybe, want to be).

It's fortunate that most of us don't write mainly for the money. On the other hand, royalties have symbolic importance, because they represent readers. We write in the hope of being read. Low sales can make one feel there isn't much point in writing, since nobody will read the stuff anyway. While that feeling in itself isn't exactly burnout, it can get discouraging. That "What's the use?" malaise sometimes creeps over me, especially with three publishers folding under me within the past few years. While I haven't stopped producing new fiction, right now I'm mainly working little by little on getting the "orphaned" works re-released, partly through a new publisher (Writers Exchange E-Publishing) and partly through Kindle self-publishing.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Surviving the Gold Rush as a Writer

The latest issue of RWR (the members' magazine of Romance Writers of America) includes an article titled "The Key to a Lifelong Career" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, whose online articles on the business of writing can be found here:

Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Her essay in the May RWR focuses on how to avoid burnout but ranges over a number of related topics—handling success (some writers try to replicate the process that led to their success without really understanding it and end up "working harder" without working "smarter"), reasons for burnout (e.g., pushing oneself to churn out too many books in a year), diminishing returns in income, what it means to find oneself in a mature market instead of a new one that's expanding at an exponential rate, overextending oneself in terms of expenses and how to reduce them, and switching one's writing business from a "manufacturing model" to an "artisanal model."

One section of this article is headed "Surviving the Gold Rush." The "gold rush" designates the exponentially expanding phase of a new market when it seems easy to get into the field and make bushels of money. Rusch writes in insightful detail about the rise of e-books and the early boom in independent publishing, followed by the leveling-off phase. She discusses the three stages in the typical way "markets develop over time": (1) The gold rush, when growth doubles, quadruples, or more each year. (2) The plateau, with large but not exponential growth. (3) The mature market, when growth still occurs, but it's slow and steady.

Personally, I never experienced the gold rush, at least nowhere near the extent Rusch describes. The closest I came to it happened in the early years with Ellora's Cave (now closed), when e-books were still an exciting novelty and EC was, although not the only game in town for that subgenre, the highest-profile and biggest-selling publisher of erotic romance for women. I was lucky enough to get in at a stage when, by publishing with EC regularly, I could count on a nice check each month. But the levels of success Rusch writes about—authors who earned royalties in the tens of thousands of dollars per month at the height of the "gold rush"—boggle my mind. Likewise, the allusions to authors becoming discouraged because their incomes dropped to half of that—still more per month than I made annually in my best years. In that respect, the indie superstars inhabit a different world from mine!

The priorities she recommends for hard-working writers concerned about potential burnout, however, apply to everyone. In order of descending importance, they are: self-care; spending time with loved ones; writing new words; publishing new words; whatever keeps you healthy and happy. While I can't point you to this particular article because it's in a members-only publication, you can find lots of related useful information and counsel in Rusch's posts at the link cited above. She provides plenty of specific details and hard facts, with numbers.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt