Phoenix blogging

Six months. Wow. *dusts everything*

My writing output comes in gusts, my revision energy burns intensely and then vanishes, my belief I know what the hell I'm doing peaks and plummets. I guess it's not too surprising my blogging would follow the same pattern. Blogging as phoenix.

There's one recurring lesson I should like to remember before it trips me up again: I may feel like I'm burning out and being reborn, but I'll always carry the seed of who I am. Not even a phoenix (or at least not even this phoenix) loses herself entirely. And it feels like I'm retaining more and more of the useful, good and productive part of self each cycle.

This latest fallow period was a combination of being very busy finishing a revision, followed by a relieved slump that slowly slid into a deep and murky depression.

Early this week I attended a gathering with an author, and realized afterwards that I was *happy* and felt like myself again. It was a momentary gleeful recognition of a confident self, someone I felt I hadn't seen in decades.

 What happened? That I felt I was treated as a colleague by a well-known author is no small part of that, I'm certain. But I'm frequently treated as a colleague by others I respect, so that's not all of it. I'd successfully navigated a social situation I was uneasy about, so that could have contributed (if nothing else, euphoria I wasn't going to spend the rest of the week beating myself up for saying something stupid. That is not a *small* win in my life).

It wasn't a sudden surge in exercise; I've been struggling with various minor health inconveniences that have dissuaded useful exercise. I've been eating yogurt again, due to a heavy cycle of antibiotics. There's some research that suggests a connection between depression and unhealthy bacterial gut populations. (And a fascinating one that links a combination--fungus and bacteria--to severe intestinal disruptions like Crone's, but I digress). Perhaps I should add yogurt with my meals for the next two months and see how that pans out.

And maybe this episode of bleakness has finally burned itself out. It fought back; the good mood didn't last. But I've made more revision progress this week than I have for two weeks, so I'm pulling out of it. I've gotten very useful feedback from beta readers that has opened some possibilities for me, and I'm ready to go forward. I'd hoped to be at this stage three months ago, but I'm here now, so... onward.

Ides of May

It's been a month and a half since I posted; "The Man Who Bridged the Mist" seems to have broken me. *lol* That was the hardest of the group to do. I loved that story,  wasn't sure why and didn't think I did it justice teasing it apart.

Perfectionism rears its ugly head? Probably.

I'll get back to the short story dissections soon. In the meantime, here are a few of my lessons from the last 90 days: 

* Classes keep my interest and motivation going. I signed up for Holly Lisle's "How to Write a Series (Expansion)" course because she's planning on taking the group through a six month, loosely-scheduled course in which she's rewriting and re-taping her teaching materials. I figured I couldn't get six months of motivation and accountability-to-self-and-others that cheaply anywhere else. So far (I'm about three weeks in) it's working.

* I am a cyclical being. Phoenix should be my middle name. Crash and burn is normal. So is rising from the ashes. *sigh*

* I need to be certain that I'm 100 percent behind my own goals. i.e., that I'm being honest with myself about them. That sounds like a no-brainer, but last season I had a huge set of goals I was trying to accomplish in three months. I spent two days making detailed plans so all I'd have to do is check steps off as I went... and stopped working on them after a month and a half. Life happened, but I *allowed* that "life" stuff to stop me, and I don't think that would have happened if I was truly committed to the goals I was trying to reach.

* Writing down what I do accomplish is essential, because I don't remember much of anything I accomplish beyond 24 hours. In that same three-month period, I *did* do many things ... it's just that few of them were on my Grand Plan. Had I not kept track of everything that I was doing, I would have thought I'd laid on the couch for 90 days, and crashed and burned even harder as a result.

* Asking a few basic questions clarifies what I'm thinking a lot. That's the benefit of having colleagues read something you've written, of having friends who'll talk you through your latest relationship snafu, of having a partner to talk through life decisions. Another brain on a problem is rarely a bad thing. It would be nice to be able to set up a way to do that for myself while I'm still in the idea stage to avoid future problems, or at least knock off the worst ones. 

How many of those are recurring lessons I keep learning? Oh, all of them. Although the tracking portion is something I've never stopped doing, and the cyclical knowledge is what keeps me going when the world opens up under my feet -- it's happened before, it'll happen again, I just  have to keep breathing.