Man, I guess I\u2019m going to get personal in this post. Don\u2019t read if you can\u2019t bear it.<\/p>\n
The month of March was lame. I hated it. I\u2019ve said to a friend or two, \u201cI wish I could just hit the backspace button and erase all of March.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nothing awful happened. I don\u2019t even have an excuse. If I did, I think that would make it easier. But, no. On the surface everything was hunky dory. My family was healthy. My community and church responsibilities went along as normal\u2014a little stressful, but nothing I could point to and say was particularly difficult.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, depression slammed me. I couldn\u2019t pull myself out of it. I ate. Everything. And\u00a0wallowed. Ugh. And I had been so excited for March because it was going to be the first time in half a year where I\u2019d have blocks of time to get a new novel cranked out. It would afford me the weeks I needed to create the draft and so I could have it edited and done to publish before summer and the weeks where my kids are home and I get to really focus on them instead of storytelling.<\/p>\n
And then\u2026this.<\/p>\n
Do you have any idea how hard it is to write romantic comedy when you feel like a black cloud has encased your soul?<\/p>\n
If I\u2019d had some kind of depressing cancer drama in my TBW (to be written) lineup, I would have done better.<\/p>\n
As it sits, I\u2019ve got 9\/10 of a little ought-to-be-frothy romance in my computer, and the characters are dull, lifeless, and coping with mountains of self-doubt. They don\u2019t even have a semblance of witty banter. The helium balloon of a plot I handed them? They took it and sank it like the Hindenberg.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a shame.<\/p>\n
So, what do I do with this pile of words? I am not sure. And today, when I went to revisit it after a day off, I saw just how hollow all the characters\u2019 lives are, and how little I like them, and how I\u2019d feel bad asking readers to pay even ninety-nine cents to spend six or seven hours reading about their lives.<\/p>\n
Lame.<\/p>\n
Which made the whole \u201cbummer\u201d tone in my life resurface. And now I wonder whether I should start just planning a lot of cancer dramas and change my whole genre completely. Will the heavy cloak never lift?<\/p>\n
Sigh. I guess it gives me a huge pile of compassion for those who have to deal with this on a more regular basis. But am I the only person for whom depression is actually a cause of guilt? I have no reason to feel down! I am, of all women, most blessed! Life has not <\/em>handed me a lemon. My blessings are just countless: food on the table, nice shelter with AC<\/em>, darling and healthy children, a kind and loving husband\u2014the list goes on and on.<\/p>\n Then, how can I let myself feel this way? How ridiculous, how self-centered. I should be able to think or exercise or clean or garden or pray or serve myself out of this muddle.<\/p>\n Or not.<\/p>\n It\u2019s probably something that will lift with time. Soon, right? Seriously?\u00a0But meanwhile, if I pump out a novel that has less of a lighthearted tone than some of my other books, I fear my readers will abandon me. Because I write for them, and they come to me in times of struggle and expect an uplift. Or so I perceive.<\/p>\n So, now what? Do I just set this novel aside and pretend it never happened? Hit the veritable backspace on my life and pretend that the work I did on this book would\u2019ve been much better spent doing genealogy or weeding the side yard? I don\u2019t know. Or as a writer do I allow myself to show a different facet of myself to my readers?<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to know. And I don\u2019t know if I publish it, then finally crawl out of this hole, whether I\u2019ll realize how lame the story is and quickly have to unpublish it.<\/p>\n Again, with the backspace key.<\/p>\n Sigh.<\/p>\n Anyway, if there is someone out there who reads this and finds they struggle in similar ways, I hope you know you are not alone. Just like with the characters we write, opposition doesn\u2019t all have to be external. Some has to come from inside. I don\u2019t know why God created things this way, and I may never understand. But I trust He will help me through it–and you as well.<\/p>\n\n Man, I guess I\u2019m going to get personal in this post. Don\u2019t read if you can\u2019t bear it. The month of March was lame. I hated it. I\u2019ve said to a friend or two, \u201cI wish I could just hit the backspace button and erase all of March.\u201d Nothing awful happened. I don\u2019t even have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[755],"class_list":["post-1467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-struggle"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OUjT-nF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1467"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1467\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1467"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1467"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1467"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}