Best Laid Plans

In June I had so much hope for this to become a creative writing summer. I signed up for another Camp NaNo and I was placed in the best of cabins with only other M/M authors. And they all contributed too, in the best of ways. It felt great. I had huge expectations.

Then life hit. Or more precisely, anxiety crept up on me and when it had set its claws in me I wasn't able to do much more than clean (and believe me, I never clean unless it is absolutely necessary, and often not even then) and cry.

It took me exactly four weeks to get up of that anxiety/fear pit and by then Camp NaNo was all over, and I had accomplished exactly four and a half hours of revising.

Well, from before I know summer is not my most productive time of year. It is simply impossible to sit down for longer periods of time when the rest of the family demands not only your physical presence, but your mental presence as well. Not that I was able to give them much of that with all my worrying going on.

Maybe I will steer clear of writing for a while (until the kids have moved out - it's only another ten years or so) and focus on reading. I really ought to widen my reading habits and I have already put a few titles on my To Read/Want To Read list. I contemplate reading in Swedish again ( and I have purchased a few titles for that intent too).

I have also contemplated whether I should try writing in Swedish, and whether I should write in an other genre. Maybe I shouldn't write romance - I'm not a romantic person, I don't believe in love at first sight or soul mates or any of that other romantic sap. Neither do I write genuine genre romance - I always want more realism in my love stories.

If I was to follow the old rule - write what you know- then I'd probably be writing suburbia family dramas, or possibly horror stories. Why? Because that's what I know. Of all emotions I am best familiar with anxiety and fear. Death fear is one particular feeling I  know up close. I know what it feels like to have your skin crawl with cold fear, your breath cut short and your muscles going tenser, and tenser and tenser until you just know that something very, very horrible is about to happen ... right about any time now.

Also I am afraid of the dark, of losing my loved ones, of confined places. I am afraid of pain and of the unknown ... and my list could go on and on and on, but you get the idea. And then I have not even started on the family drama, the mundane middle age life crisis ...

It's definitely enough material for a novel or three ... but do I want to go there?