Back by popular demand: “Jurassic Park.”
Back despite popular indifference: “Geezer Alert.”
Surprise! I took a little geezer spring break. It’s going on three months now, so it’s also a summer break! That’s the great thing about being retired and voluntarily writing internet essays that no one depends on for living a quality life.
Still, I don’t take such interruptions lightly. I enjoy writing and hope one or two of my pieces over the last few years have entertained a few.
But there were several reasons for the writing vacation.
It began with a decision to wind down promotion of my second book following announcement of the Eric Hoffer Book Award results. (My blog was started to gain a following and hopefully generate interest in my writing and, by extension, my books.)
Self-promotion is my bete noir, anyway, and four or five months of efforts to get the word out — through social networks, a book giveaway, local press releases, college and high school alumni publications — was enough for me.
And, to be honest, it went nowhere. To be painfully realistic, it will take a miracle for either of my books to be bestsellers. In the self-publishing world, it’s all about luck and timing and some crazy hook, like 50 shades of wild sadomasochism.
Aggressive promotion can pump up a few hundred sales (at least that’s what those internet business pitching services for self-publishing say) but that’s in the world of young authors, not geezers. If I was in my 30s, either just starting an internet newspaper like my old Kirkland NewsLine or pursuing my novelist dream, I believe my energy level would give me a fighting shot at success.
Now, my best hope/fantasy is that someone with filmmaking connections will discover my narratives and see their cinematic potential. Call me silly but I really do believe in both stories.
Reason number two for taking a break was the arrival of annual spring/summer cleaning or home maintenance projects: washing 15 windows and screens, restoring the lawn from its winter beat-down, top-to-bottom office dusting and vacuuming, monthly dog bathing . . .
Tackling these labors replaced my three to four hours of daily writing.
As those projects wound down a few weeks ago, a tired cliché became my third reason for a geezer break: writer’s block.
I stared at the blank Word document each day and found no reason to type. Nothing struck me as interesting. What you’re reading now is a forced exercise — writing about not writing — to get me jump-started.
So, is “writer’s block” real or just an excuse for being lazy or mentally bankrupt?
I’d say it’s an individual thing. I can only speak for me. (Read: Copping out!)
Sometimes my head is just bursting with subjects that I want to expound on. (For examples, see past blog posts.) Once they’re in my head, I can’t wait to put them on “paper.”
Other times, I’m pretty convinced I‘ve covered every topic that interests me and about which I can offer any valid opinions. (Some would say I was in that state before I started, but that would be cruel.) That’s what I would call writer’s block, and for me it’s a legitimate mental freeze.
I reach that point primarily because, in my current situation, my only deadlines are self-imposed ones. Deadlines, while dreaded anxiety-producers, are necessary for all but the most self-motivated among us.
As a news reporter or columnist for products that had specific publication dates (either daily or weekly), I knew that I had to come up with articles by a certain time or there would be hell to pay — like disgruntled editors (when I was an employee) or blank spaces and boring fillers (when I ran my own newspaper).
That “creative pressure” just about always produces some good stuff, I must say. Songwriters, authors, artists . . . just about anyone in a creative field knows that some external force, applied in healthy doses, can force their brains to function at top speed and produce their best work.
A brain without such pressure can become sloppy and sluggish.
Of course, too much pressure can inhibit growth, push anxiety to freak-out levels or simply stifle any desire to continue, a.k.a. make a person just give up.
I’ve been in all of those situations over the course of my writing career.
“Creative pressure” got me through a few hundred news articles, including several that won state or local press awards when I was in my 20s (That sound you hear is my horn tooting).
But when I think back to such work, I shudder as I recall how nervous or pressured I felt at various stages of getting them done. I doubt I could stand it now, in my inexplicably nervous geezer years (see blog post of September 2012, “A Geezer’s Day or Just This Geezer’s Day?”)
And there were also times, even then, that the pressure was destructive, not creative, when things just got too much for me to continue with my normal output.
Most of those times came while I was putting in 80-hour workweeks to get out a weekly paper. I remember especially when I just could not find enough time or inspiration to write my weekly column.
Once, in desperation on publication eve, as I faced a ton of photos that needed to be developed and several meetings still to be covered, I filled the space with Sam Spade’s classic send-off speech to Brigid O'Shaughnessy in “The Maltese Falcon.”
Not a proud moment.
I must have left a few hundred readers either scratching their heads in
bewilderment or shaking their fists in annoyance. But no one said a thing, at least to my face.
In my current situation, pride is my biggest motivator. I started something and I want to see it through. As for deadline pressure, there’s just the notion that a blog takes several years of regular production to achieve widespread attention and build a readership.
But there’s no real pressure to continue — no livelihood at stake, no monetary investment to justify. It’s just a personal goal, one part of a quest to continue writing in my geezer years. For a while, of course, there was the added notion that greater visibility on the internet and social network sites could drive book sales. I would say it did but not enough to register on any bestseller lists.
What will the future bring?
Hey, that’s too much “creative pressure” to contemplate. For now, I’m thinking maybe two posts a month for the foreseeable future.
Yes, I’ve got a few ideas for August.
But first here's a little joke I found while search for vacation clip art!
Back despite popular indifference: “Geezer Alert.”
Surprise! I took a little geezer spring break. It’s going on three months now, so it’s also a summer break! That’s the great thing about being retired and voluntarily writing internet essays that no one depends on for living a quality life.
Still, I don’t take such interruptions lightly. I enjoy writing and hope one or two of my pieces over the last few years have entertained a few.
But there were several reasons for the writing vacation.
It began with a decision to wind down promotion of my second book following announcement of the Eric Hoffer Book Award results. (My blog was started to gain a following and hopefully generate interest in my writing and, by extension, my books.)
Self-promotion is my bete noir, anyway, and four or five months of efforts to get the word out — through social networks, a book giveaway, local press releases, college and high school alumni publications — was enough for me.
And, to be honest, it went nowhere. To be painfully realistic, it will take a miracle for either of my books to be bestsellers. In the self-publishing world, it’s all about luck and timing and some crazy hook, like 50 shades of wild sadomasochism.
Aggressive promotion can pump up a few hundred sales (at least that’s what those internet business pitching services for self-publishing say) but that’s in the world of young authors, not geezers. If I was in my 30s, either just starting an internet newspaper like my old Kirkland NewsLine or pursuing my novelist dream, I believe my energy level would give me a fighting shot at success.
Now, my best hope/fantasy is that someone with filmmaking connections will discover my narratives and see their cinematic potential. Call me silly but I really do believe in both stories.
Reason number two for taking a break was the arrival of annual spring/summer cleaning or home maintenance projects: washing 15 windows and screens, restoring the lawn from its winter beat-down, top-to-bottom office dusting and vacuuming, monthly dog bathing . . .
Tackling these labors replaced my three to four hours of daily writing.
As those projects wound down a few weeks ago, a tired cliché became my third reason for a geezer break: writer’s block.
I stared at the blank Word document each day and found no reason to type. Nothing struck me as interesting. What you’re reading now is a forced exercise — writing about not writing — to get me jump-started.
So, is “writer’s block” real or just an excuse for being lazy or mentally bankrupt?
I’d say it’s an individual thing. I can only speak for me. (Read: Copping out!)
Sometimes my head is just bursting with subjects that I want to expound on. (For examples, see past blog posts.) Once they’re in my head, I can’t wait to put them on “paper.”
Other times, I’m pretty convinced I‘ve covered every topic that interests me and about which I can offer any valid opinions. (Some would say I was in that state before I started, but that would be cruel.) That’s what I would call writer’s block, and for me it’s a legitimate mental freeze.
I reach that point primarily because, in my current situation, my only deadlines are self-imposed ones. Deadlines, while dreaded anxiety-producers, are necessary for all but the most self-motivated among us.
As a news reporter or columnist for products that had specific publication dates (either daily or weekly), I knew that I had to come up with articles by a certain time or there would be hell to pay — like disgruntled editors (when I was an employee) or blank spaces and boring fillers (when I ran my own newspaper).
That “creative pressure” just about always produces some good stuff, I must say. Songwriters, authors, artists . . . just about anyone in a creative field knows that some external force, applied in healthy doses, can force their brains to function at top speed and produce their best work.
A brain without such pressure can become sloppy and sluggish.
Of course, too much pressure can inhibit growth, push anxiety to freak-out levels or simply stifle any desire to continue, a.k.a. make a person just give up.
I’ve been in all of those situations over the course of my writing career.
“Creative pressure” got me through a few hundred news articles, including several that won state or local press awards when I was in my 20s (That sound you hear is my horn tooting).
But when I think back to such work, I shudder as I recall how nervous or pressured I felt at various stages of getting them done. I doubt I could stand it now, in my inexplicably nervous geezer years (see blog post of September 2012, “A Geezer’s Day or Just This Geezer’s Day?”)
And there were also times, even then, that the pressure was destructive, not creative, when things just got too much for me to continue with my normal output.
Most of those times came while I was putting in 80-hour workweeks to get out a weekly paper. I remember especially when I just could not find enough time or inspiration to write my weekly column.
Once, in desperation on publication eve, as I faced a ton of photos that needed to be developed and several meetings still to be covered, I filled the space with Sam Spade’s classic send-off speech to Brigid O'Shaughnessy in “The Maltese Falcon.”
Not a proud moment.
I must have left a few hundred readers either scratching their heads in
bewilderment or shaking their fists in annoyance. But no one said a thing, at least to my face.
In my current situation, pride is my biggest motivator. I started something and I want to see it through. As for deadline pressure, there’s just the notion that a blog takes several years of regular production to achieve widespread attention and build a readership.
But there’s no real pressure to continue — no livelihood at stake, no monetary investment to justify. It’s just a personal goal, one part of a quest to continue writing in my geezer years. For a while, of course, there was the added notion that greater visibility on the internet and social network sites could drive book sales. I would say it did but not enough to register on any bestseller lists.
What will the future bring?
Hey, that’s too much “creative pressure” to contemplate. For now, I’m thinking maybe two posts a month for the foreseeable future.
Yes, I’ve got a few ideas for August.
But first here's a little joke I found while search for vacation clip art!