Continuing my countdown to this blog’s 10th Anniversary on the 27th September by revisiting what I was posting at that time each year. (here’s the post for ‘A Perfect Ten – 2019)
Today we hit 2018.
The nearest post to the date was 30th September – my Birth Day, my 60th in fact! The post itself is a little bit of a celebration, but in it I referenced a post I’d written about five months earlier, wherein I ponder the upcoming event and what, if anything it meant to me.
At sixty-one I still feel much the same about the passing of years, but I want to add a bit more about the Days themselves.
If you’ve announced your birth day on the interwebs (and we’re connected in some way), you might’ve noticed that I respond with’Happy Birth Day’, and not the more traditional ‘Happy Birthday’.
There’s a reason for that.
I’m rather fond of ritual celebrations, the ones that are connected in some way to Mother Earth or the deeper substance of our lives, and the day we’re born is probably the most important one. Although recognised in our diverse cultures, I thought it deserved its own upper-case ‘H’, and ‘B’, and ‘D’. … just like Summer Solstice, (coming up soon here in the Northern Hemisphere) the Queen, (there can be only one) and the Fraser Valley. (where I live)
Language, (particularly the English language) is a very fluid entity, and although there are occasional ‘fluidations’ that gets up our noses, (we all have our pet peeves … or several … or many. Go on, admit it) that fluidity is a good thing. It stops us, and our culture, from stagnating. And while a little stagnation is OK every now and then, if we do it for too long we end up smelling like bog-gas.
I also talked about getting into the final rounds of editing ‘Prelude’, (for those who are new to my blog is the tale of how I gained some rather fascinating wisdoms) which led me into a bit of a blue funk about my writing efforts of late.
“What writing,” I hear you ask. “Exactly,” I respond.
Along with our proposed Wunder-Lusters adventures, I feel like every other project I had in the planning stages was torpedoed by the Plague of the 21st Century, (the first one at least. I have a sneaky suspicion that these kinds of global events are just getting started) including my writing, fiction that is.
I have story ideas, I have outlines, (I’m mostly a pantser, but occasionally, when the mood strikes me, I do a serviceable rendition of a plotter) I have research, I have scenes – with dialogue and everything, I even have some fantastic mock-covers I created with Pulp-O-Mizer, (you’ve never heard of Pulp-O-mizer? Oh, it’s such fun, even if you’re not a writer, you need to go over there right now and have a play, I’ll wait) but what I don’t have is all the words lined up in the right order and formed into (coherent) sentences, paragraphs, pages, and chapters.
It’s a bit depressing really … and frustrating.
I was OK shifting gears away from my writing to focus on getting the Wunder-Lusters up and running, but I can’t seem to find the right combination of gears to get back to it. I keep on grinding the clutch. (which incidentally, is why I love that our truck has an automatic transmission)
Sometimes you just have to keep grinding the clutch until all those bloody little gears line up again.
Widdershins Worlds 
It seems such a long time since the Wunder Lusters were dreamed. Just for your information I never put anything up my nose 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
It feels like a life time ago … glad to hear about your nose!!! 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
I was doing okay, finally settled in to writing in a pandemic – when George Floyd was killed by an unbelievable action of a policeman, and the world erupted in a different way, and people started protesting in person, and I couldn’t be there (not that I’m the in-person kind).
It is taking me a few days to give importance to the next few scenes, and I’m working at it a bit at a time, but honestly, injustice needed to be exposed, and murder needs to be punished.
We need police; we don’t need stormtroopers anonymous and terrifying and shooting into the faces of teenagers.
This is why you’re not writing. Because it seems futile.
It isn’t. Persist. But also don’t be too hard on yourself – you are living in these times, too. With more than your fair share of the angst.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I will … thank you, Alicia … never-the-less, we persist. 🙂
LikeLike
Sometimes I need to be still. Sometimes I need to turn off the electronics and get in touch with my inner muse. Sometimes I need this too often!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Especially in these troubled times. 😦
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Grinding the clutch”, I like that metaphor. One of these days I’ll get off automatic.
LikeLiked by 1 person
You bet your sweet bippy you will! 😀
LikeLike
The Pulp-O-Mizer looks interesting. I see they even have a mad scientist.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Heh, one can never have too many mad scientists. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Clutch is a word like moist and stoat that I’d really rather had never been coined. Not sure why but i always give a little shudder if they are used.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Heh, heh, heh 🙂 … they probably have some sort of vaguely sexual connotation that we’ve never going to mention again.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Quite!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ve been facing the same [writing] problem, and the only thing that seems to work is forcing myself to sit down and just look at the damn thing. I’ve reassured myself that I don’t have to actually type anything, but I have to spend a minimum of an hour staring at it. Reading the bits I’ve already written.
I’m almost scared to say this in case I jinx myself but…despite deleting far more words than I write, I’m starting to feel excited again. Just a little. I suspect that’s what you need too. We have to be excited about the story or no one else will be. Go on…I dare you. One hour of reading. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yeah, sometimes you just gotta do the hard fucking work!
… I’m doing the ‘review of old posts’ and reading a lot of stuff from the ‘early years’. I was so bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed about the whole getting a publishing contract thing that I want to shout down the years, “DON’T DO IT!!!” 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Meh…we live and learn, don’t we? I delayed self-publishing Vokhtah coz I was waiting to hear back from a scifi publisher. It was rejected, of course. I knew it would be but… -shrug-
LikeLiked by 1 person
P.S. … congratulations on finding your excitement again! … may it continue to grow. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
sssshhh! Jinx, remember. :p
LikeLiked by 1 person
(in muffled voice) – “mah lips are sealed.”
LikeLiked by 1 person
-mumble mumble thank you mumble mumble-
LikeLiked by 1 person
This year began with me reading in the paper around 4th January that a motorcyclist who had been killed the day before had told his friends and family that 2020 was going to be his year. I snapped the paper shut and thought “when humans make plans God laughs” or however that saying goes. But it was sad and it woke me up. Whatever I was doing I had better get started. But then there were bushfires and plagues and now protests and I am actually completely shocked out of my little rut by now so….so I’ve undertaken a series of courses and am going to begin something entirely new because why not? Keep grinding gears a Widds I absolutely love that phrase – you’ll find your slip stream when you least expect it 😊
LikeLiked by 1 person
I’ll look forward to reading about the ‘something new’. 😀
LikeLike