Finding Happiness as a Writer: INTERMISSION

I'm about halfway finished with the series as loosely planned, but what I've discovered is that blogging is super-draining for me. I'm about to get hit with two edit letters and then I have to draft at least two more books this year (hopefully three 0_0), and all that work feels totally manageable compared to the thought of weekly blogging. And some of you do it every day on top of high school or college or a full-time job. I am completely in awe of you. Thank you for what you do for the publishing industry.

But I just don't have your passion for blogging or fortitude or je ne sais quoi, so I'm putting this series on hold indefinitely and will return to blogging about once a month, mostly when I have something to give away. I'll do my best to return to the series if I see an increase in hits, and in the meantime I'll turn off Captcha and turn on anonymous commenting w/moderation to see if that encourages more sharing and interaction on these posts.

Maybe check out the series from the start?

INTRODUCTION: Why did I want to write this series? Writers in general and myself in particular tend to struggle with negative emotions. Last year I found myself with many lovely writer things: my first copyright, four book sales, my first starred review, and more. But I wasn't happy. And I realized that was messed-up, so I worked on gratitude and focus and goal-setting and fighting back against destructive thought patterns. And it helped, so I wanted to share my process.

KNOW YOURSELF: This is a super-analytical, super-long post for eggheads, but it will show you that writers vary widely. Just because you chart your weekly sales numbers on a scatter plot and your friend is like "oh, I would never look at those" doesn't make one of you right and one of you wrong. This post will help you figure out who you are and what you need to maximize your happiness.

ACCEPT THE UNACCEPTABLE TRUTHS: This post will crush your soul a little bit if you're unpublished, because unpublished writers tend to think being in the query trenches is the worst and that things will be much shinier once they have an agent. Maybe. Maybe not. If you're a person who wouldn't look at sales numbers, you probably want to skip this post.

CONTROL WHAT YOU CAN: This post will glue the pieces of your soul back together a little as I take you back through all the unacceptable truths and give you strategies for dealing with them. There's a lot in publishing that writers cannot begin to control, but there are a few things we can do to maximize our chances for success.

MANAGE YOUR PANIC: Got stress? This post is all about managing anxiety--from full-blown panic attacks to that nagging feeling that every setback is going to lead to the worst-case scenario.

ESTABLISH A SUPPORT NETWORK: Writing can be stressful at any level. You need people in your corner. This post talks about finding the right mix of people to rely on. On the flip side, if you have unsupportive crit partners, frenemies, or family members who are hindering your writing, you need to set those people straight or kick them out of your writing world. This post has tips for that too.

TAKE A BREAK: Half for you and half for me, this midpoint post is about the importance of taking a break now and then. To facilitate your R&R, I give you my top TV shows for writers, and link you to a couple other blogs with additional choices. You might want to bookmark this post for the summer rerun season :-)

Obligatory kitty picture. I call this: Cat yoga--corpse pose.

See you next Thursday for YASH! I'll be hosting Rita Arens and doing some kind of secondary giveaway too :-)