When Executive Dysfunction Attacks.

On one of my Sunday Updates I wrote about how bad my executive dysfunction has been recently and it continues to be pretty difficult to deal with but I’ve noticed something weird. It feels like I’m trapped in a mire of dysfunction in which I’m unable to get anything done. It feels like I’m just lying here, immobile, unable to function, in an extreme state of procrastination, but I just crossed three things off my to do list. All three things done today.

You might be wondering if the list was some kind of bullshit productivity hack – make a list of all the things you’ve done today so you won’t feel useless – but that’s not what it was. That is a thing I do sometimes. Creating a ‘done’ list can make you feel better about how you’ve used your time. Often the problem isn’t that you’re doing nothing it’s that you’re doing stuff other than the stuff you think that you should be doing. Again, that’s not what’s happening today.

I have done things that I intended to do, even against my own resistance to doing them. I’ve done research, communication and household chore tasks today. I even did a bit of work on my current novel (Project Kindness). But it feels like I’ve done nothing.

Am I feeling like this because I haven’t done enough? Is there something more important that I’ve forgotten to do? Am I beating myself up about this in order to not think about something else? Or could it be that part of my Executive Dysfunction problem isn’t Executive Dysfunction at all but a kind of irrational guilt about being disabled? I still can’t accept how little I can do.

Additional note.

I wrote the first part of this several days ago but didn’t post it because I wanted to space out my posts and I’d written a lot. Today I sat down to edit it and finally post it on a day where I procrastinated leaving the house for so long that I didn’t actually get out and thus didn’t pick up my medication from the local pharmacy. Today I am not ticking things off the to do list. Today I am having trouble staying awake.

Maybe this is just the normal variations in life, amplified by my chronic ill health? All I know is that today it feels like every thought is wading through treacle to get to the front of my mind and maybe I shouldn’t expect too much of myself under the circumstances.

NaNoWriMo 2018 Update 2

NaNoWriMo is going super well, thanks for asking. Ha ha. No, don’t look at Scrivener.

Damn.

Look I can totally explain all the red text. Those are just notes. About how badly it’s going and about how I don’t know what order things should be in or when things happen or which characters to use in which scenes. And also about how I’m not totally convinced by my own plot.

Joking aside, my word count is fine I’m just worried that this novel is going to take even more editing than my writing usually takes. Which is annoying because when I can work out what a scene should actually be the scenes usually come out pretty good.

I now have a new writing table which means I can sit on a comfortable seat while writing. Hopefully this will help. However I am deep in procrastination. Things that I have done when I should have been writing include manicures, mobile games, stress eating, online shopping for Xmas presents, multiple trips to the pharmacy and housework.

I finally got to see a doctor about the question of whether I have rheumatoid arthritis in my hands. Apparently my inflammatory markers are only slightly elevated so maybe not and if I do then it’s very early days. I’ve been prescribed gel NSAID painkiller to apply to my hands. It seems to work. Now I just need to remember to use it even when my hands are not hurting.

So good luck to all you other people NaNoWriMoing this year and my the writing gods have mercy upon our souls.

One foot in front of the other

I am not having any fun.

It’s worse than that. I’m having whatever the opposite of fun is, the Anti-Fun possibly, and I’d really like it to stop

Everything hurts, doing anything takes an insane level of effort, judging by the weather someone has opened a portal to hell over Scotland and the rest of the world seems to have gone nuts while I wasn’t looking. It’s hard to believe that there’s any point in doing anything.

I have done some things recently but I’m pretty sure that nothing will come of any of them.  However, since I’m typing anyway, I might as well type an update about the few things I managed to con myself into doing.

I decided which of my novels to attempt to pitch at Bloody Scotland. I even wrote a bunch of 100 word pitches for it and picked the best one with some help from my spouse and one of my friends. However I haven’t sent it in yet. I don’t know if there’s any point.

I’ve been working out with weights a bit. As much as I could manage what with my health and this insane weather. I have no idea if it’s making a difference or not.

I am continuing to wear compression garments for my Lipoedema. They seem to be working but I’m currently awaiting new compression leggings. I was measured for them on the 9th. The manufacturer still hasn’t got round to making them. I don’t know how long it will be before they do get round to it. I had to make phone calls to chase things up. I hate making phone calls.

I am so bone tired that I need a new word for it. Exhausted just isn’t enough. Neither is knackered. I am heartsick of the continued burden of existence. I see no point in anything.

I’m trying to persuade myself that I’m excited about the new series of Doctor Who and the trailer for Shazam. I haven’t seen Ant Man and the Wasp yet. There’s Captain Marvel to come. And there’s Infinity War part 2 next year. I haven’t read all of Ben Aaronovitch’s excellent Peter Grant books yet.

You’ll notice that there’s none of my stuff on that list. I’m not even pretending to care about my own novels. They are important to me. I love them. I just can’t muster any enthusiasm for the idea of showing them to anyone. What’s the point?

Immobility

I’ve been sitting at this computer, trying to write something, for the last two hours. This is not writer’s block. This is ADHD and I would really like it to stop.

ADHD means that I don’t always get a choice about what to focus on. Sometimes I flit from project to project unable to settle. Sometimes inspiration strikes but then it’s gone by the time I’m able to sit down and work on it. Sometimes a shiny new idea will hijack my mind while I’m trying to work on something else.

I have techniques that can wrangle my attention to where I want it to be but they don’t always work and they tend to rely on external supports like deadlines. If I commit to writing something by a certain date I’ll usually succeed but if I don’t have a plan then I tend to just drift and get nothing done.

That’s the problem. I don’t have a plan.

It’s not the only problem. I also don’t know how to make a plan, I can’t decide what sort of plan it should be and I’m having trouble convincing myself that it’s worth the effort. I have stories that I want to tell but I don’t know what to do with those stories once they’re told and if I don’t do anything with them then what’s the point of finishing them.

And now I’m convinced that the effort of writing this has been wasted. The sentences seem stilted and I’m sure that it makes no sense. I hate it. Writing it has been like trying to drag body in a velcro suit across a shag pile carpet. I’m going to post it anyway.

Semi-useful displacement activity

Right now I should be sending queries out to agents. Or working on one of the two potential follow ups to the novel that I should be querying. Or I should be cleaning the kitchen. What I’m actually doing is making notes on yet another attempt to write something that my kids will be able to read.

This will be my fourth attempt to write something suitable for the YA (young adult) market. Two failed because I wasn’t ready to write the story. The notes and the first drafts are still there and I will probably come back to them. These stories are probably only temporary YA fails.

The third one failed because I was writing across two time periods and the grown up version of my heroine decided she wanted to jump into bed with of her best friends. I can’t really blame her – he’s gorgeous and available and she thought she was going to die the next day – but explicit post 40 extra-marital sex doesn’t really work for in a YA book. I will probably come back to it and it might work as an adult novel but it’s probably a permanent YA fail.

It is deeply annoying to me that I find it so hard to write stuff that my kids could read. I think a big part of the problem is that I find it very hard to think about my own childhood and teen years. My childhood sucked. My teen years were a nightmare and I’m constantly surprised that I survived. All the advice that I can find about writing for teens says that you should try to remember what it was like to be a teen and my reaction to that is, “Hell no! It sucked enough the first time.”

Of course there’s nothing stopping my kids from reading my other novels. They probably will at some point but I’m putting it off as long as possible. Sorry kids. Your mother has a sick, sick mind and I’d prefer that you didn’t know about it.

Stalled

There are times when I want to do a thing and I know I should do it but I don’t seem to be doing it.

Days pass and I continue not to do it.

I miss out on opportunities. I piss people off. Sometimes it costs me money. I know I should do the thing. I want to do the thing but I continue not doing the thing.

It makes no sense. I get angry at myself. Sometimes other people get angry at me. They demand an explanation. They expect some kind of excuse or justification. There is none. I wanted to do the thing. I was capable of doing the thing. I intended to do the thing but somehow I did not do the thing.

I forgot to do the thing. I just didn’t get round to it. I didn’t really want to do it. I was scared of doing it. I thought it wasn’t really important. None of these are true. I was acutely aware of the thing. I had every intention of doing it but somehow it did not get done.

Over the years I have developed some coping mechanisms. Whenever possible I do the thing immediately. I know that if I put it off I just won’t do it. I try to avoid volunteering to do stuff because I know that there’s a chance that I won’t do it and not volunteering is a lot less painful than volunteering and not following through. If I can’t avoid it and it can’t be done right away I try to delegate it to someone who is actually good at getting things done.

There was a time when this problem applied to everything. Over the years I’ve found ways to actually get some things done but it’s patchy. At the moment I have 3 overdue library books, a conversation I need to have with someone that I’ve been putting off for a week and a list of literary agents that I haven’t contacted. On the other hand I have meals planned for the next 3 days, 9 novels in various stages of completeness and I’ve been posting 3 times a week on this blog for 12 weeks in a row.

It still doesn’t feel like progress. No matter how many things I get round to doing it’s never enough. There are still those things that don’t get done or get done too late and every single one irks. I feel like an idiot. A weak and foolish idiot that can’t follow through on anything. Except, of course, for displacement activity. I can displace like a boss.

I don’t have anything to say.

I should have something to say. I normally put something on the blog on a Monday. I’ve usually written in over the weekend. Normally writing something isn’t a problem. I planned to say some more stuff about Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2 but I’m really not feeling like it.

I’m worried. The election solved nothing. Brexit still lies ahead and there’s no plan to deal with it. Politics, both globally and in the UK, is still all messed up. I’m still broke. I still don’t know what to do with my novels.

I just want some sort of hint about where to go and what to do. A great big quest marker in the sky. Even it it’s only so I can decide to head in the exact opposite direction because screw quests.

I don’t have anything to say. I don’t know what to do. I’m worried about the future. So instead of doing anything constructive I’m going to blow up some (virtual) tanks.

Genre Woes

Today’s displacement activity is obsessing about genre. Again.

I should be writing or querying. Instead I’m obsessing about which genre I should be describing my completed novel as.

I know that the books that it most closely resembles are usually described as urban fantasy or contemporary urban fantasy. Except for when they’re magical realism but there’s at least two contradictory definitions for that. The urban fantasy thing isn’t quite right because the magic in my books is too subtle and I also have some weird science. There’s some alternative history but it’s not alternative history because it’s set in the present. There’s some advanced technology but not enough to make it science fiction. It’s quite dark but I don’t think it’s dark enough to call it horror.

The opening paragraph of a query letter should tell the agent you’re querying what genre the work is. How do I describe my weird, dark, slightly magical, detective thriller so that the right agent will actually read it?

None of which solves the problem of finding the right agent in the first place. They say that if you think an agent is right for your novel you should query them regardless of their stated genre preferences. Ok. I could do that. How would I find that out? I only have so many hours in the day. I’m not stalking every agent in the English speaking world until one of them expresses a fondness for ghosts and detectives and demons and magic and artificial intelligence all in the same book.

So, obviously, I should employ the scattergun approach and just query every agent in the English speaking world because I’ll eventually find the right agent that way. Right? Except you’re supposed to tailor the query to the agent. And tell the agent what genre you’re querying.

Why can’t I just be a sensible writer and write in a sensible genre?

Writer’s guilt

This week I have not been a good writer. I wasn’t a good writer last week either. I have not been working towards my writing goals. I’ve only done a couple of proper writing sessions. I haven’t queried the existing finished novel. I feel like I’m not going anywhere.

On the other hand I’ve written a few blog posts and played a lot of World of Tanks. I had fun doing both but they don’t really take me anywhere.

I feel guilty about the lack of progress. But I also feel like there’s no point in working towards those goals. What’s the point in querying if rejection is guaranteed and the rejection just makes me depressed? What’s the point in pushing myself to write when no-one else is going to read what I’ve written? If I’m only writing for myself then there’s no hurry.

Is rejection guaranteed? I don’t know if it is but it certainly feels that way. It feels like I’ve already been turned down by the agents most likely to actually want it. If getting a deal is a 1 in 100 chance then I don’t feel like I’m working through the 99. I feel like I’ve already tried the agents that were a 0.5% chance and a 0.3% chance and a 0.1% change and with each new agent I try I’m just adding zeros before the final digit.

It’s hard enough to motivate yourself to face rejection when you know that your chances are slim but when your chance of failure only increases every time you try it does make the whole thing feel kind of pointless.

I try to tell myself that it’s not hopeless. People get agents all the time. Novels get published. Readers buy books. Writers make a living. These are things which happen. There’s no reason they couldn’t happen to me. Well, no reason apart from that it’s me. And when good things happen to me it’s only because life is setting me up for a kick in the teeth.

So I might be feeling guilty but as soon as I’m done here I’m probably going back to shooting at virtual tanks.

Change of plans

I have decided that maybe it’s time to give my completed novel a rest for a bit. Maybe it’s the wrong work to query? Maybe I was thinking too big, too long, or too crazy?

I’m going to concentrate on another story. As it stands it’s a complete first draft of a novella but I think it could be more. I think it could be a short novel. It’s smaller in scope than the novel I was querying though I think it will get a bit bigger as I expand it. Maybe it’s more what agents are looking for as a first novel? I know that the setting will be easier to pitch to Scottish publishers and easier for them to sell to readers.

Of course it’s probably displacement activity. It’s easier to write another novel than it is to query the finished one. The novel has to be finished before someone can reject it and, by extension, me. Writing is the bit that I know I’m good at. Well, think I’m good at. Most of the time.

It’s something a bit different for me. The narrator character is disabled. Writing stuff that’s too close to home is something I usually shy away from. It feels like cheating somehow. But I keep seeing agents and publishers asking for diverse storytelling and diverse characters. Maybe they actually mean it. And if they don’t I’ve got this other story I can whip out when they tell me that they can’t sell a locked room mystery set in Aberdeen where the central character is an unglamorous disabled woman.