Tag: Musings

Early in 2019, about five minutes after the Department of Defence sent my Air Force hubby and myself over to the other side of the country on a posting, they decided (in their wisdom) that the DH had reached his use-by date and he needed to be medically discharged after thirty years of service.

Now this wasn’t necessarily bad news – the Department of Defence look after their members and in the DH’s case, that meant he would be retiring… just a decade earlier than we had envisaged.

And in other great news, it meant we were moving back across the country to where seventy-five percent of the Gang of Four were still living. (And I had missed them, so very much while we were away!)

Moving back to Western Australia at the beginning of the COVID juggernaut meant we had to hang around for six months figuring out our next move. We had plans to move down south of Perth, to an area we had come to love during our visits with BIL and SIL in Nyamup. Along the way, we kept driving through a little town called Bridgetown, and the drive through the main street always had me thinking about moving there. With six months to fill in, we had plenty of time to consider our options and after mulling over things, we started to study properties.

It was round about then, that I saw this little place – built in 1904, it was quirky enough to amuse me and with half an acre of land and a jumble of sheds and gardens in need of work/restoration, not to mention an interior which was renovated in a half-hearted manner by its current owners – it meant there was plenty of little jobs to keep the DH gainfully employed for quite a while. (And if you knew my darling husband, you’d realize how important it is to have some jobs for him to do – despite his medical discharge, he’s not the kind of guy who sits around.)

What has followed has been nearly nine months of busy-ness – and is one of the reasons I haven’t been writing much. For starters, the vast majority of the interior was painted in colors I hated (particularly the sky-blue which was everywhere). Secondly, there wasn’t a single matching door knob in the house – not good for an obsessive compulsive loon like me.

It’s also meant that while already struggling with writer’s block brought on by all the upheaval of the past couple of years, that block has been further compounded by the upheaval of moving in and commencing the restoration of our ‘grand old dame’.

Somehow though, despite the writer’s block I’m dealing with – the characters who roam around the superhighways in my mind haven’t got the message that we’re on a hiatus. So at any given minute of the day, I have characters popping up and giving me a heads up on their plans for their stories to be heard, and they keep on bombarding me with little ‘bites’ of information. Not enough to nudge the writer’s block out of the way, but enough that I’m considering it a positive start.

Now if I can just get rid of the sky blue paint around the place, I might be on the road to writing something useful…

In my fifty odd years of life, I’ve seen some stuff.  From the Global Financial Crisis, to recessions, to SARS, AIDS, 9/11 and numerous other crises, we have rolled with the punches and I thought I’d seen the scariest things, the worst of humanity.

I was wrong.  With the current COVID 19 pandemic, I’ve seen the worst of humanity come to the fore.  Stores are struggling to keep up with demand as our basic needs are swept up in a rush of panic buying and people physically fighting one another to buy a roll of toilet paper.  Selfishness has overtaken many – and I’ve seen an ugly side of humanity.  I suspect it will get worse before it gets better, but I’ve found a bright side I hadn’t expected.

Writing is giving me a respite from the craziness, the fearmongering, the anxiety I’m struggling to cope with.  My battle with Bipolar Disorder, severe anxiety, OCD and panic attacks is well known, and the situation in the world currently is setting off a whole lot of triggers, which are proving detrimental to my mental health.  My GP has already recommended I stop watching the news and I’ve taken her advice – although that doesn’t mean I’ve buried my head in the sand regarding COVID 19.  What it does mean is that I’m drip-feeding myself with news reports, as and when I can cope with them.  And in the meantime, as I’ve mentioned, I’m writing, editing, planning – and I think that is the thing that will get me through these trying times.

In fact, I suspect that in many ways, being a writer is heaven-sent because it gives me an outlet.  And that makes me a very lucky girl because I have somewhere to be, somewhere to hide out.  The worlds I create in my head are a balm to a scary bloody world that quite frankly, I don’t really like much right at the minute.

Stay safe out there, and remember – be kind to your fellow humans.

One of the absolutely hardest things about being a writer, is firstly, the writing.  I watch some of the other writers I know, who publish six to eight books a year, and I take my hats off to them.  I know it involves a great amount of dedication, and more importantly, a lot of self-discipline.  None of which I seem to have in any tangible amounts 🙂

I started off this year with a bunch of good intentions, and plenty of enthusiasm.  I was going to finish off six… yes, you read that correctly… SIX of my WIP’s.

It’s now May… and I’ve finished one.

What’s the problem? I hear you ask.

That would be Procrastination: and that capital ‘P’ is deliberate.  I can find absolutely anything in the world to do, other than writing a book.  There’s reading, of course, which is a wonderful alternative to actually doing anything constructive.  And then there’s organizing my movie collection.  And photo collection.  And downloading new pictures from Pinterest for inspiration for new books…

You see the problem.

But the thing I find even worse, the most difficult part of walking this path of being a writer… it’s the publicity stuff.  I am so incredibly impressed when my fellow authors announce they’re going to a convention, or doing a book signing.  I think they’re all so incredibly brave!

Me.  Not so much.

But this past week, I’ve been giving a great deal of thought to this writing gig, and my role in the writing world.  I think I’m brave enough now to say I’m an author.  With six published books, and another one in pre-publishing, I guess it’s a moniker that fits.  Even if sometimes, I don’t have the confidence to believe it myself.

But what I need to do now, is commit to this writing gig, believe in myself a little more, and work harder on sharing my stories and progressing and improving.  I don’t think I will ever, ever go down the convention/book signing path (Good grief!  How terrible would I feel if I had a signing and NOBODY TURNED UP!) but I am taking the advice of a very good friend, who tells me I should have a newsletter.

The prospect immediately filled me with fear, because who would want to hear anything from me?  What could I possibly have to say that was interesting?  Although I still have a tonne of doubts, I’ve taken my friend’s advice, and I’m formulating a newsletter to share with my readers.  And I’m telling myself, every day, that I am an author, and I do write things people like to read.

Now to push that procrastination to the side, and get on with those other five books scheduled for 2017…

’til next time,

D.S.