letter #4 from me (Gwenda Bond) to you: Extrovert lag and doing the work
I wasn't sure what I was going to write about this week. It's been a hazy jet lag week (I was trapped in McCarran International airport with the Wheel of Fortune slots echoing gently in the background for ELEVEN HOURS). I could write about Prince, but frankly, I'm still too sad to write about that. Still trying to wrap my head around it. But actually, it's not the jet lag that made this week rough, it's the other kind of lag, for lack of a better word the "being on" lag. The extrovert lag, when you go back to your desk and need to get into that safe, vulnerable place where words happen.
Let me be perfectly clear up front: I am not complaining. I'm so beyond grateful to have demands on my time and especially to get to travel to these wonderful events and meet readers and librarians and booksellers and THE BEST PEOPLE BECAUSE BOOK PEOPLE ARE THE BEST PEOPLE (it's true) and always ALWAYS to see author friends (LOFF). I'm being perfectly sincere when I say all of this. I enjoy author travel. A lot. It fills you up in a different way, and reminds you that what you're doing at your desk matters, and it helps keep you in touch with the community--which in YA is really, truly an amazing one to be a part of. We support each other; we help keep each other relatively sane. This is the life I've always wanted and I am GETTING TO DO IT. So I'm not complaining. Not a bit.
I'm just still figuring out how to juggle this new life, ironic since in theory there should be less (but there isn't; I was just neglecting a lot of stuff!). First up, going full-time, I thought, "Well, I'll have no trouble getting into a daily routine." And yet. Perhaps because I was for once relatively free of deadlines for this brief window (window closing!) and I'm not really good at not juggling alllll the balls, after having juggled them for so very long. (When you type juggling balls more than once, it starts to sound really unseemly, even when you write circus books. So picture me juggling plates instead, trying not to break them.) But I've only recently sort of figured out that I need to draw more on what's always worked for me routine-wise--writing first thing in the morning, before the world gets in. Which makes it much, much easier for me to shut the world out again later and do more work. Other things I'm figuring out how juggle at the same time--having a new book coming out (and another one shortly thereafter) and the anxiety around that, plus more travel than I've done already started and continuing over much of the next few months, plus back to really needing to get the work done so my life feels like it's all interconnected and not just separate pieces that have been grafted together, Frankenstein-style. Today: Makeup! Tomorrow: Pajamas and not showering! It can be a little whiplash-y for the mind.
Another thing I've been thinking: Traveling and promotion is part of the job, but it is not part of the work. An important thing to remember. The work is what happens on the page or in your mind that ends up on the page. This is something I learned before I ever had a career, when I was a baby writer who was lucky enough to get to observe a very successful writer friend, (okay, I'll drop his name, because he gets credit for this and for being one of my early mentors and placing a lot of formative literary influences into my hands--I'm talking about Neil Gaiman) up close as he was in the still somewhat early days of blowing up and juggling all those things and more and the writing. Now, I'm definitely *not* comparing my career place to his at that time, but all us writers who get published do eventually end up with a variation on this problem. The "business" of writing--requests, emails, tours, even charitable work--multiply with each level of achievement. Those things are all great, desirable, what you want... But they also can take time and--perhaps just as dangerous--mental focus away from the work, the important thing, the thing without which all this stops or you rest on your laurels (aka starve, for most of us).
What I learned from Neil was just this. If he had to write a book, at a certain point, he just shut off everything nonessential and made the space to do that. He was never looking to get away from the writing, always to get back to it. He also did parts of it while moving from place to place, typing scenes on airplanes or in the backseat of cars. This is a reminder to myself that is also possible and I need to get better at doing it. Because airplanes are like in-between spaces, and I can easily trick myself into thinking that's the writing cave, a place where focus is possible. (Don't freak out because Neil; I've known him for decades and so just be like, Oh, Neil, right. He's a smart cookie who works a lot. ;-)
Because, here's the other thing. I was doing a school visit recently in my hometown, rewarding on a whole bunch of levels. One of the questions I got was: What's your favorite part of being a writer? (Or maybe it was "the best part"; I can't quite remember. But the answer would be the same.) And I thought for a second and said: It better be the writing.
And it is. Like most writers, I get a little or a lot antsy and irritable when the work doesn't get enough time. We may complain about deadlines, they may be killers, but secretly we love them. And I think it's because they are the perfect reason--especially for us ladies, who are used to being nice and feeling like we must Do All The Things Or Else We'll Be Considered Terrible Witches--to say, SORRY, deadline, and close the door so we can do our work.
So here's to getting work done, and hopefully to seeing some of you while I'm out on the road! It really is my favorite thing...besides the writing. But now I gotta pack.
This week's news:
Maybe next week I'll write about the anxiety of having a new book out; you could ease that anxiety by preordering! Kirkus Reviews said basically the nicest of all possible things about Lois Lane: Double Down (and I think it's better and it's definitely longer!). Official release date is May 1.
There's tons of great stuff up in the Writing for Charity Benefit Auction, including an hour Skype for your book club or classroom with me and 20 signed copies of Fallout! A perfect gift for a local school or book club.
My website seems to be down (I'm sure it'll be back up before long), so you can see my North Texas Teen Book Festival schedule here. Come say hi!