Newsletter Notes: Stuck in the Mud

Writing has gotten off course into the mud and needs a tow out.

A few years back, on a rainy evening some young guests arrived at the house and tried parking wherever. A few of them were stuck in the mud. One of the drivers decided to pull off the driveway into an area where an underground water line had been repaired. The car was in mud up to the axle when I arrived home. All the young people worked to get the car out, but just made it worse. The car sunk deeper as the hole got bigger.

I knew the vehicle could only come out of the mud hole with a wrecker and we called one.

Meanwhile, there was at least one more car parked where it could get no traction. Everyone wanted to try and push it out again. I stopped that plan, grabbed a big chain I had, then towed this car out of the mud with my old Honda Pilot.

The wrecker soon arrived and pulled the other car out of the mud hole.

It was an instructive night for some young people without life experience. Aside from the obvious “watch where you park in the rain”, there were several other points to be made such as: don’t try to spin tires in mud, you can’t lift or push heavy objects out of mud, pull vehicles out of mud, know what you can get out of the mud with which kind of a tow, and more. The reason I pulled one car out and not the other was experience. One was just in need of relocation for traction – a simple tow to the right place. The other was too deep to extract from the hole without a wrecker.

Why is this story relevant? That’s where I am with writing and the business of it. My year plus of health problems has left me far behind on everything. I tried for several months to do it all at once, or as fast as possible. That’s a mindset like trying to drive out of a mud hole and you can easily make the situation much worse and certainly frustrating. Such times mean taking a step back and assessing the situation with a critical eye using life experience. I needed to know what needed a minor tow and what needed a wrecker.

After a few months of scrambling through a lot of writing and writing-business projects while getting some tasks completed, I finally stepped back and re-assessed everything. The holidays were a good time for this observation and led to some honest realizations that my goals would require some additional work, much of which I won’t detail here. Suffice it to say, I decided what needed the most effort and what didn’t against priorities that had changed over the last year plus. For instance, I really wanted to upgrade my website with better page content and overall organization. Along the way, I realized it was deeper in the mud than expected with a retired WordPress theme. It needed a wrecker.

That wasn’t the only unforeseen problem that revealed itself, but several goals required taking further steps back in order to achieve them. It took honestly assessing time and available energy to address them all. It meant, creating a priority for everything based on needs and what was required. Some are a simple tow out of the mud, if that. Other goals will take a little longer. However, I’ve decided I may be stuck in the mud, but I’m going approach these problems with a sense of pulling them out the best way available.

As such, the website can wait temporarily with some work-around solutions. Other goals, like publication of new books need focused attention, specifically work on The Cursed Mage Case Files. January was a step-back month on the road to pulling CMCF out of the mud. I found the series plot needed enhancement once I read a series of historical articles. These were timely and led to some minor changes in The Unseen Hand which will enhance the series. It was progress even if it didn’t look like it. More importantly, the cover arrived and it looks great. That development was a big step forward and made me realize I want to order my covers sooner in my publication process because they provide a motivating visual of what the book will become.

I’m still working on pulling things out of the proverbial mud, but I’m making progress each day even if it seems very little. Each small step puts me further along with overall goals as I hope to gain momentum. Later on, I hope to address specifics of where The Unseen Hand is, timing of the publication, a blurb, and even an excerpt or two. For now, I’m busy towing everything out of the mud as necessary.

Meanwhile, The Bow of Hart Saga experienced several months of very good sales resulting in additional reviews. If you’re interested in that series, have a look at these links for more information.